


Delicate Magic

by Waters



Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, Cuddling & Snuggling, Ice Powers, M/M, Purim, Therapy, ice sculptures or lack thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9922562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waters/pseuds/Waters
Summary: Kyoya has ice magic. Tamaki wants them to enter an ice sculpting contest, go to France for a family holiday, and revel in all of Kyoya's super cool ice powers. But when Kyoya's powers start acting up, and Tamaki and Kyoya's relationship drifts somewhere it shouldn't, Kyoya's not sure he'll survive. Kyoya's not sure if heshouldsurvive.





	1. Prologue:Ice Ice Baby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atrouspine](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=atrouspine).



> There is more to come! Much more! it may take a while, but there shall indeed be more. This is a request so if you want to request me, feel free. I make no promises about WHEN it'll be done but it will probably get done sometime somewhere. Feel free to hit me up on [my tumblr](http://www.stories-n-thinigs.tumblr.com/ask) or here, if you want.
> 
> You can also tell me your thoughts on this piece too! Have a favourite line? Favourite moment? Are super confused about something? Think my summary needs some work? Feel free to tell me.

 

 Ice magic was monstrous. In movies, it was associated with Christmas, with elves and twinkling laughs. For Kyoya, ice magic had only ever brought death. Kyoya had only ever brought death. Dead plants, dead insects, dead little mice frozen solid from his touch. And if his magic hadn't brought death, it had brought destruction. Building, bones, friendships. Tamaki was his friend now. And it was tempting to tell him. Tempting to show him.

His classmates wouldn't take it the same way. They knew him for what he was, and the confirmation that he had ice powers, would not make their heart leap. It would clear the fog from their vision and they would clearly see the carnage in Kyoya's wake. But Tamaki wouldn't see that. Tamaki might see the magic for what it was, he might see it for _magic._

Kyoya stretched out on his couch, in his bedroom. The start of high school, and Tamaki’s birthday were in a few weeks, and really, Kyoya should be preparing. But there was still snow on the ground, icy on top, but softer underneath like a winter crème brule. The weather reports were complaining about the unnatural cold snap that no one had predicted, and what it could mean for global climate change. Kyoya should let the weather slip into spring, but there was something about a thick, lazy blanket of snow, and Tamaki standing too close to him, trying to keep warm, that made Kyoya hesitate.

“I still don’t know why you don’t want anyone to sign your yearbook,” Tamaki said, from the other end of the couch. Kyoya’s sock clad feet were dangling in his lap and Tamaki was shifting his knees, uncomfortably. Kyoya didn’t like people touching him. He was okay with Fuyumi. He was fine with his niece and nephew sometimes too. They were being innocent. Trying to express affection. Kyoya trusted them. And if he was awkward, or uneasy, he wasn’t sick.

With everyone else, a kind of wrongness would settle over his skin, and he’d feel too hot, feverish in a way that made him nauseous.

He put up with it a lot. Sycophantic hands on shoulders. A girl touching his arm for too long. He didn’t mind touching when there was a reason, like dancing, or helping someone up, but the idea that someone he didn’t know was trying to establish physical intimacy bothered him.

It should be bothering him _now_. But it wasn’t.

“There has to be someone you want to sign your year book. We’re going into high school next year, it’s a big deal,” Tamaki sighed and lifted Kyoya’s feet. It was warm, but not the sickly heat someone else would produce.

“I’m going to see them next year. There’s no point,” Kyoya said.

“C’mon, friends always sign each others year books.”

Kyoya shrugged. Probably there would be a line of people wanting to sign his year book so they could write fake messages. “Don’t ever change” they would say. Or “have a good break.”

“There has to be _someone_ you like. Who did you hang out with before me?”

Ayame and her ilk. But there was no way to explain that to Tamaki. Ayame and the girls weren’t his friends. He was apart of their group, he was an unquestioned presence if he sat down to eat with them, and he was always given a cursory invite to group events that he did not usually attend.

Tamaki looked at his expectantly, but there was nothing to say. Kyoya didn’t like to explain himself. To explain why the bookish girls liked him, was to explain why (until very recently when his connections to girls became valuable) the boys in their class did not.

To explain that would dredge up the nickname Demon Lord, which Tamaki had no doubt already heard whispered.

“Everyone seems to like you well enough,” Tamaki continued, forearm resting on Kyoya’s shin. “Especially the girls, though…I’m not sure if that’s important to you…” Tamaki looked down into his lap, at Kyoya’s feet. Tamaki rubbed at Kyoya’s foot slowly, almost like he was fidgeting. “Your foot’s like a brick,” he mumbled, hands kneading absentmindedly.

It was nice. His feet hurt from walking, they were stiff, sore, and the pressure from Tamaki’s fingers was soothing.

Tamaki’s eyes were still downcast. He thought Kyoya was lying to him, or hiding something from him, or maybe Tamaki just wanted to be a part of a large group of friends that Kyoya didn’t have.

Excuses, _lies,_ were rolling onto Kyoya’s tongues. Useless words he’d tell the other boys in his class if they were nosy, but not Tamaki. Tamaki was different.

 Kuze had been different once. A decade ago. Kyoya age five, Kuze six. Kuze had taken him seriously in a way the other children hadn’t. Kyoya had always wanted to know too much. He was desperate to know more. He _burned_ for it.  He asked too many questions and he thought about things the other five year olds hadn’t understood. Not “where do babies come from” but “what happens when you die?” “what’s the point of existing?” “Why did Japan invade other countries to kill their people and steal their things?”

Kuze at least, was older, a little wiser and they could talk intelligibly about pirates and war tactics and historical movies. When they played pretend games Kyoya did research and Kuze embraced that, agreed with it, implemented the strategies Kyoya came up with.

The other children thought Kyoya was a know it all. They didn’t like to feel stupid and they didn’t try hard enough to be smart.

When the kids raced, he went home and practiced until he was out of breath. When the class played tennis or soccer or any game Kyoya worked hard to be good. He worked hard to be liked, to make up for speaking out of turn for not understanding the social cues and politeness.

But he was an Ootori.

And Ootoris were not polite by nature. They were nice, sometimes, but there was a fierce righteousness that burned within them. It burned in Fuyumi when she saw someone in trouble, it burned in Yuichi when he considered health policy, and it burned in his father at odd moment Kyoya could never account for.

Kyoya could remember conversations, parties, people chatting, a man joking about having to leave the party early to babysit his children.

“It’s not babysitting if it’s _your_ _own_ children,” Yoshio Ootori had said. The room had gone quiet. Kyoya’s father had sipped his drink as if nothing had happened, but the man Kyoya’s father was talking with had his mouth open. The option was to argue with Kyoya’s father, which wouldn’t be polite and would make the man seem worse, or to let it go and accept the admonishment.

 Something like that had happened with Yuzuru Suoh too. Tamaki’s father and his were talking, something about plans in June. Yuzuru Suoh had mentioned needing to look up when the French celebrated Father’s Day, to make sure he booked the correct time off.

“Not to worry,” Yoshio Ootori had said. “To be celebrated on Father’s Day, you actually have to _be_ a father.”

The difference was that Kyoya’s father knew where the line was when he crossed it, and child Kyoya, had not.

The other children had been uncomfortable around him. The moderates, the middling, liked him, because he was nice and reasonable, but the elites saw him as a challenge to their authority. The begins of a social hierarchy was starting to form as grade school approached and a boy who didn’t know his place wasn’t tolerated. But he was smarter than them and faster than them and they couldn’t dominate him.

It had been a complicated dynamic. When he was friends with Kuze it had lessened. And then Kyoya had made some out of turn remark about oranges and the whole thing had tumbled. And then his mother died. And his sister with her.

Bullying wasn’t new in Japan, and if he hadn’t been an Ootori, if his first-grade teacher hadn’t pitied him and took the class to the Shinto Shrine Kyoya’s family owned, then he would have ostracized.

But Kyoya was an Ootori, and Ootori’s didn’t have to be polite. A dog obeyed a master. A wolf did not.

His demonic reputation started with the class trip.  But they hadn’t feared him until what came after.

Even now, perfectly charming, Tamaki had marked him as the cool type: mysterious removed. Kyoya wasn’t personable. Kyoya could never be personable. Monsters, however tame, were not meant to be known.

There were wild dogs, massive dogs, some husky breed the size of motorcycles, that had hung around the shrine. They had some pigment disorder and were all black all the time, but they also had polydactyly. Like Kyoya, and Yuichi and their mother. When his mother’s family had been alive, before the fire, they had fed the strays, looking at their matching sets of too many fingers. Soon there were at least a dozen, hulking creatures who stayed in the woods by the shrine.

His classmates on the shrine trip hadn’t known about them, but knew enough about ink black things with large teeth to be afraid. But Kyoya wasn’t afraid. He had snuck out of the shrine when they were supposed to be sleeping so he could play with them.

Ayame and two other students had followed, watching him as he walked into the pitch-black forest under a new moon. Kyoya knew the woods. He knew them without having to look, but the others didn’t see a well worn, familiar route. They saw darkness. And Kyoya navigated the darkness as if he had been born in it.

They watched him dive into the underbrush and pull out a wolf like their teacher pulled out her pen from her purse.

 They saw him play with this vicious creature, this monster who nuzzled and licked him. This creature with too many fingers like him. This beast who recognized one of its own.

When the dog-wolf turned around to snarl the children shrieked and took off back towards the shrine to tell the others what they had seen. They didn’t have to ask if he was youkai. They didn’t have to whisper it as gossip. It was a fact. It was known.

Rich, modern, Japanese business people weren’t superstitious and their children weren’t superstitious. But either way, you didn’t fuck with demons.

That was the start.

But children were children. Little kids were still at that age where they tried to befriend monsters.  Kids were still at that stage when they didn’t know enough to be afraid.

So later, the next year, age seven, Kyoya had tried to make friends. It was the age were girls were pressured to be less competitive, and more cooperative and if no one wanted to play with Kyoya in case he out competed them, then couldn’t he cooperate?

It has started simply. First it had started with a boy. Shin. He kept trying to look up girls’ skirts, flipping them when he could. The teachers were useless. They were like the police, all talk and talk and at the end of the day you had to fend for yourself. You had to pull _yourself_ out of the car wreck that just killed your mother, and you had to drag _yourself_ to safety.

Anyway.

First Kyoya had switched uniforms with a girl, Aimi, for the fifteen minutes it took for Kyoya to pick the lock and break into the boy’s locker room to get his spare uniform. Aimi decided they were friends after that. Her and him and Ayame.

Shin of course, did not stop at Aimi. But Kyoya was a problem solver. Kyoya saw a problem, Shin flipping skirts, and Kyoya, rationally, _astutely_ , realized that little old Shin needed his arm to flip up those girls’ skirts.

So Kyoya walked up to Shin, in the middle of recess and Shin was talking and talking and Kyoya broke his fucking arm in front of everyone. The teachers asked him why he did it. Because it needed to be done. They asked him if he was sorry. He wasn’t. They asked him if he even understood what he did wrong. He didn’t.

Child Kyoya’s skin was growing colder, eating himself up, threatening to tear him apart with new found powers Kyoya knew to keep hidden.

So, when Shin’s brother came, to pick a fight with him, little Kyoya the smallest in his class, Kyoya didn’t use his ice powers.

 Kyoya wasn’t a strong kid, but he knew his way around an insult. He had listened to his father, to his sister and he knew how to look for weakness. Bruises on legs, a need to dominate, protective of a younger sibling, combative of authority, but flinched when they raised their hands.

Kyoya had seen the abuse in Shin’s brother, and not truly understood what it was except that he could use it to hurt someone and save himself. So, he had. Kyoya told that kid he was weak, that he deserved what he got. Shin’s brother was the reason their father hurt them, Shin’s brother was the reason their mother cried. Shin's brother was the one tearing his family apart. Kyoya could see every dark secret hidden in Shin’s brother’s eyes and Kyoya had let it all out, watching for the hurt and twisting the verbal knife.

But his powers, like frost, had crept to the surface, and Shin’s crew of preteens were shivering. When they threw the first punch Kyoya acted quickly. The fight itself, was quicker still.

A dislocated thumb here, a broken leg there, cold induced nerve damage somewhere else. Kyoya was not black and blue at the end of the fight. Kyoya was red. Not the red from a too hot face, but the red of blood. Blood dripping onto newly frosted grass in the middle of September.

To the kid’s in his class, it wasn’t surprising. He was a demon and demons had powers. Demons were vicious. Aimi and Ayame were not his friends, in the same way that you weren’t friends with your guard dog. You could like them, cherish them, play with them, but they were still attackers. Foreign. Different.

“Why are you so quiet?” Tamaki asked. Kyoya started and shrugged, leaning forward to tug off his socks. His feet were sweating, and Tamaki’s hands were cool as they dug into the flat of his foot. Kyoya could tell Tamaki that he liked the massage.  The words died in Kyoya’s throat. He imagined what Tamaki would say about the story. ‘So what?’ He would say.

Kyoya didn’t want him to say that. He didn’t want to convince or cajole, not when Tamaki was looking at him, staring into his eyes in a way that made Kyoya’s heart pound. He wanted Tamaki to be right. But he wasn’t. And Kyoya didn’t have the heart to convince his friend he was a demon.

Part of him wanted to. Part of him wanted to confess his sins because if ever there was an outside perspective who could agree with him it was Tamaki.

“I’m not quiet,” Kyoya said. “I’m just thinking of how you could know me for so long and still think I genuinely care about people.”

Tamaki smiled, his nose crinkling, the corners of his eyes pulling up. Child Kyoya had smiled with too much teeth, pulling his lips too far back, revealing his canines. But Tamaki smiled like air, light, fluffy and Kyoya wanted to hear him laugh. Tamaki’s laugh was the kind of thing that would make gods of beauty strike him down. It was the kind of thing that made Kyoya want to learn to draw or take a photo so he could capture and look at this moment forever. It was the kind of thing that made him want to be funny.

Kyoya wanted to be close to him. He wanted Tamaki to like him, not just put up with him because they were friends, but to enjoy their time together.

He wanted Tamaki to see him for who he was and stay. He’d already seen behind one mask, he’d already caught a glimpse of the monster beneath and he was still here and didn’t that count for something? But this want was too much. Kyoya was a fire inside, burning and burning and if he pulled Tamaki too close he’d turn to ashes.

Kyoya needed to keep his distance.

Kyoya shrugged, trying to communicate what he wanted to Tamaki beyond words, beyond speaking. What if Tamaki didn’t understand?

Sweat prickled down Kyoya’s back. Slowly, he edged his toes to push into Tamaki’s thighs. He needed Tamaki to understand. He needed Tamaki to see him and stay, but it was the _seeing_ him part Kyoya didn’t like. He shivered, his veins cooling rapidly in a way they hadn’t since he was little and refused to use his powers, keeping in all inside.

“If you want people to sign your yearbook you can get them next year,” Kyoya said. “I’m sure you’ll have people lining up to sign. In fact, I could probably charge them for the privilege.” Tamaki didn’t smile. Kyoya shifted again. “Look, I don’t care about people signing my yearbook because they don’t really know me. I’m not meant to be known.”

For a moment, nothing happened. And then Tamaki burst out laughing. “Oh my god,” Tamaki slurred between laughs. He was wheezing tears in his eyes and Kyoya tried not to let it infect him. “Do you hear—that’s so pretensions, ‘you’re not meant to be known.’ Okay....”

“That’s not what I meant!”

Tamaki was still crying with laughter, his hair falling in his face, brushing the slope of his nose. Tears were prickling at the edges of his eyes, like drops of crystal, leaving delicate trails as they traced the planes of Tamaki’s face.

Kyoya’s face was flushed, but it was easy to pretend that was embarrassment.

“I just meant, no one is _meant_ to be known, people don’t exist—”

“Sure. Okay.” Tamaki wiped at his eyes and Kyoya crossed his arms, shoving his feet back in Tamaki’s lap. Kyoya wasn’t doing a very good job at looking angry, but he wasn’t doing a good job at feeling angry so he supposed that was fair.

“I’m just teasing Kyoya,” Tamaki said, flicking one of Kyoya’s toes. Like his fingers, he had twelve toes. Usually he didn’t show other people this. Regular people had five fingers and toes. Everyone else, apparently, was a freak or a demon.

“I don’t like being teased.” Kyoya said.

It didn’t feel like a confession. Not when he said it like this, not when Tamaki was smiling and Kyoya was sprawled out on his couch, feet in Tamaki’s lap.

“Okay. I’m sorry.” Tamaki tried not to smile, averting his eyes to look back at Kyoya’s feet. Kyoya’s heart beat softened and something lighter settled inside him. It didn’t feel fluttery, like butterflies, but it made him feel full.

Kyoya watched the emotions play on Tamaki’s face as he tried to stop smiling. Tamaki’s lips were shiny with lip balm, that might be too sweet or might be just sweet enough if Kyoya pressed his lips to Tamaki’s to find out. Tamaki’s skin was clear, and soft Kyoya wanted to reach out, to drag his thumb down the ridge of Tamaki’s jaw, or maybe to trace his cheekbones.

Kyoya wasn’t an idiot. The stomach flipping, the heart beat, the wanting to run his fingers through Tamaki’s hair. He knew what it meant.

He was falling hard.

Only Kyoya wasn’t Icarus flying too close to the sun. Kyoya was the sun. And unless he did something soon, Tamaki was going to fall back to Earth, and break.

 

 


	2. Chapter One: Crack in the Ice Mask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyoya finally tells someone his secret.
> 
> Tamaki goes to the market.
> 
> Haruhi runs away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a lot of editing to do, but this is coming along! Feel free to drop your favourite line, tell me what you thought of this chapter as a whole or point out pieces you didn't like! You can reach me here or at my [tumblr ](http://www.stories-n-things.tumblr.com)
> 
> There is more to come!
> 
> Also if you're wondering about the level of depth of characterization and how may headcanon I will cram into this fic prepare yourself. it will be a lot.

Kyoya’s hands weren’t delicate. Ice magic wasn’t delicate. Tamaki expected ice magic to come with fastidious, gentle control, the ability to carve statues out of thin air. He expected Kyoya to put on dazzlingly displays of winter wonderment and cast mighty blasts of snow from his hands.

All Kyoya did was make things cold. Including himself. With Kyoya’s power came a thirty degree drop in temperature, liquids freezing solid and frost pricking on the edges of plants and windowpanes. There was blasts of snow. No shooting of any kind. He wasn’t fucking _Elsa._

 “We could make igloos!” Tamaki said. He jumped up and clapped his hands on the deserted shore, boots covered in dirty snow. He was excited, his mind playing images of a thousand things Kyoya couldn’t do.

The shore was deserted, and Tamaki was the brightest thing here, his only competition the moonlight glinting off banks of grey snow and too black water.

 Part of Kyoya, wanted to sink into the snow and become ice. He hated this. Tamaki was going on about new ideas, like he did when he was thinking of plans for the host club, but this was different. Kyoya could give Tamaki what he wanted at the host club. Kyoya could give Tamaki what he _deserved._

But not here, not now.

 He wished he had never slipped up and shown Tamaki his powers. Now that Tamaki was exposed to the _idea_ of magic, the reality would be disappointing. Kyoya would be disappointing.  Kyoya was always disappointing: not as rich as Tamaki, not the firstborn, not friendly or naturally polite. Tamaki needed to settle down with a nice, high bred, rich girl and he shouldn’t be looking at Kyoya like that. With long wistful gazes.

Tamaki shouldn’t be holding Kyoya’s hand when he thought no one was looking. He shouldn’t be smiling at Kyoya like a breath of fresh air, or land after a lifetime on the sea.

Kyoya should have never revealed his hand and his magic, but it had been too easy.

They were still at the beach, where he’d had the mistake. Kyoya was sitting, Tamaki was pacing, ecstatic, waves crashing against the stone cold sand. Kyoya shivered in Tamaki’s jacket which he never should have taken. But Tamaki was always so hot, like a roaring fire, and Kyoya’s hands were going from red to white.

They come here to skip rocks. Kyoya had never skipped rocks before, but Tamaki had spent a lot of time alone at beaches and by creeks. Tamaki knew what he was going.

The ice hadn’t frozen over the shore, but the water would be denser and Tamaki managed to skip his first rock ten times. Kyoya had tried not to be impressed, but given that he couldn’t skip it once, it was hard not to appreciate Tamaki’s skill. Even if it was a pointless skill.

Once it became clear that Kyoya was not going to learn no matter how often Tamaki guided his hands, things had shifted. Kyoya had shivered and Tamaki had taken off his jacket, draped it over Kyoya’s shoulders and gathered rocks that he could skip while sitting next to Kyoya.

They plopped down a cleared path of too cold sand, and Tamaki had skipped his rock, sitting down, seven times.

Things had been fine. Normal. Maybe Tamaki was sitting too close. Maybe friends didn’t go to the beach in the middle of the night to skip rocks. Maybe Kyoya should have resisted when Tamaki ignored the rocks altogether and wrapped his arms around Kyoya’s middle. Leaning back into Tamaki’s chest had been toasty. It was cozy in a way Kyoya should have never let himself have. He almost didn’t, but there was a bone deep chill sitting in his blood and sneaking its way between his joints and into his muscles. This wasn’t normal cold. It was cold that came from magic, it was a cold that came from keeping it all inside, and every winter it built up and up until Kyoya had to boil his bathwater.  Kyoya would sink into steaming water, his legs candy apple red, still shaking, still not warm enough, even as the water bubbled and scorched.

“You really didn’t need to give me your coat,” Kyoya had said, trying to ignore the cuddling. Tamaki’s palm was soft, pressing against his upper stomach.

“I wanted to.” Tamaki paused. “I would give you anything.”

“I think you have it the wrong way around,” Kyoya fumbled for words, trying not to read into what Tamaki was saying. “People should be lining up to give _you_ something. Most popular boy in our school, adored by all, crowds of fans hanging on your every word. Your admirers would give you the shirts off your back for a kiss.”

“For a price,” Tamaki said. Too serious. The mood was shifting out of Kyoya’s grasp.

“Is it really a price if you both enjoy it?”

Tamaki laughed. “Maybe. It would be nice to have someone give something just because they cared though. Not because they thought they would get something. But I guess it’s silly to want someone to give me the moon, for nothing…” Tamaki thought about his dad, abandoning him, loving him, but not _enough._ He thought of his grandmother, who was really only his grandmother when it suited her. He thought of his mother, who would have given him the world if she could have reached up out of bed and taken it.

The stars in the sky were invisible from light pollution, but the moon shone perfect and round. Kyoya reached up, and spread his thumb and index finger out until it looked like he was holding the moon. Tamaki leaned in, looking between Kyoya’s fingers. Then Kyoya worked his magic, snow crystals forming slowly inward until Kyoya had a perfect disk, an ice moon.

“Here, the moon.” Kyoya had taken Tamaki’s hand and wrapped his fingers around the moon. There had been awe in Tamaki’s face, eyes wide, mouth turning up into a smile. There had been hope and wonder and it had all been directed at Kyoya. For a moment, he’d been warm. For a moment they were close and everything was soft and perfect. Kyoya had given Tamaki something real. In that moment, Kyoya had something _more_ than real.

Then Tamaki pulled away so he could gesture. He stood up. And now he was pacing the shoreline, going on and on about all the things he wanted. Things Kyoya couldn’t give him. Kyoya shivered in Tamali’s coat and wished for something more substantial.

 

#

 

They were at a Christmas Market. A shopping square next to a park had been closed off, and packed with booths and people and food. There were snowball fights, children skating out on the pond, commoners hawking coffee and tea and hot chocolate and warm meats. Tamaki was pressed to Kyoya’s side, dragging him around to every outdoor stall, stopping to see people with chainsaws and huge metal picks make furniture and sculptures out of blocks of ice.

Tamaki had dragged Kyoya here for the ice wine, the kind of wine his family had made, once upon a time before the Nazi’s (and then the French government) seized half their vineyards and the other half had slowly been sold off to pay for his mother’s medicine. Tamaki’s other grandmother, the Jewish one, was still fighting in the courts, but they didn’t have the money to contest the seizure for much longer.

“I’m surprised you like Christmas,” Kyoya said. He hadn’t mentioned that in Japan Christmas was a couple’s holiday and that the other marketgoers were giving them odd looks. One had even commented that they were very brave, and Tamaki, confused, had smiled.

“I just like winter. And festivals. And markets. And cheer…” Tamaki paused to buy a candy apple, the coating frozen solid enough to chip his teeth. “I hate Easter though. All those chocolate bells…” Tamaki giggled as if he had said something conspiratorial, but Kyoya didn’t comment. One hand on his apple, the other threaded through Kyoya’s arm, Tamaki was happy to stare around the shops. It was unusually cold for this time of year and Kyoya tried to tell himself he had nothing to do with it. He tried to tell himself that it had snowed five days in a row before they came here by chance, even though the weather reports had all predicted sunny days.

“Hey is that—Haruhi!!” Tamaki shouted, waving his candy apple in the air as sure enough, Haruhi ducked into a shop to avoid him. Tamaki pulled Kyoya along, past trees done up in fairy lights and several stalls selling brightly coloured desserts.

Haruhi had ducked into a chocolate shop and Tamaki barrelled into the sea of people, dragging Kyoya with him. Kyoya’s classes fogged up immediately until he couldn’t see, but he didn’t need to. The air was rich with milk chocolate and lacquer and Kyoya could detect hints of strawberry and dark cocoa. Tamaki’s pressed into Kyoya’s side, leading them through the shop like they were one, four-legged animal.

“Haruhi!” Tamaki called again and Kyoya could hear her sigh. Gingerly he peeled off his classes to wipe them, looking at Haruhi and her bag of gifts. “You’re enjoying the festivities!”

“Well…” Haruhi trailed off. Kyoya put his classes back on, but Tamaki didn’t move away. He attempted a bite out of his apple, but his teeth slid off and clanked together instead. Haruhi suppressed a smile ineffectively and Kyoya pictured them together at the age of fifty, Tamaki trying to bite into a candy apple, for old time’s sake, and Haruhi, smiling indulgently. Except, the more he thought about it the more it turned into Haruhi snickered and Kyoya smiling fondly, staring at Tamaki like he was right now.

“What are you doing here?” Kyoya shook himself.

“I was thinking of what gifts to get you,” Haruhi said. “I thought it would be nice since we were having a party after New Years and I know everyone is going to get me something.”

“I’m not going to get you something,” Kyoya said.

Haruhi rolled her eyes. Tamaki had finally managed to get his teeth into the apple, but was currently having a difficult time pulling them out.

“What were you doing here?” Haruhi asked.

Kyoya shrugged. “Tamaki wanted to check out the commoner’s market, and I confess, I know they do art shows around here and I was curious to see what was on display.”

“Really? You like commoner art?”

“I like art. Whether or not it’s common has nothing to do with whether or not it’s good. Of course there’s a difference in how you display it, but I find a lot of new art refreshing. They’re not as constrained by old conventions, and of course, the variety is a lot greater. I was at a Neo-Neo-Cubism exhibit the other day, and I saw a one artist who was almost trying to be Rubenesque which, frankly, I did not care for, but it was definitely interesting to see.” Haruhi nodded politely, but her eyes glazed over. “Tamaki’s especially fond of wood block art as well and I know there are a few places around here that sell some.”

Haruhi considered this carefully, brows furrowed. Tamaki had finally removed himself from his apple and was chewing furiously as he attempted to dive back into the conversation.

“I think art’s nice, but I dunno, it seems a little complicated.”

“Not really.”

Haruhi shifted, eyes darting to the door, but Tamaki gulped down a hard chunk of sticky apple and cleared his throat.

“I saw that exhibit.  The New Neo-Cubism one. By the Historical Museum of turn of the century air craft right? I liked the Rubenesque one _My Lady_. It wasn’t as good as an original Rubens, but it’s certainly better than a lot of Neo-Cubism I’ve seen.” Kyoya shrugged, but Haruhi stared forward blankly as if Tamaki had stopped speaking Japanese. “But anyway.” Tamaki waved his apple holding hand airily, and too close to some stranger’s hair. “Speaking of art! There’s an ice sculpture contest here and I was hoping to enter! They even give you the ice if you want. They’re holding it just after Purim this year, at the end of winter, and I thought we could enter.” Tamaki leaned closely into Kyoya. Something heavy twisted in Kyoya’s stomach. He couldn’t magic up some ice spiral or beautiful work of art. He couldn’t do the things that Tamaki deserved.

“Purim?” Haruhi asked.

“Yeah, it’s early this year and it coincidences with our break well so I’m going to go to France with Kyoya for a few days to celebrate, so it’ll be fun to do the contest before we leave and then see the results when we get back.” Tamaki was beaming, but this was the first Kyoya had heard of this. Purim, was a Jewish holiday, which meant, to Tamaki, it was a _family_ holiday and that he was bringing Kyoya specifically to France to meet his family. For a religious holiday.

Sweat pooled on Kyoya’s palms and he shivered, glasses fogging up again as the glass on them grew colder.

“No, I mean, what’s Purim?” Haurhi shifted again, like she wanted to get back to shopping, but Tamaki took her arm in his other hand, bring her close until Kyoya could smell the soba noodles she’d been cooking for lunch.

“It a holiday! My favourite. It’s…ahh the festival of…I don’t know the word in Japanese,” Tamaki mimed a gesture like he was taking names out of a hat, but Haruhi just furrowed her brow. “It’s the best holiday! That’s what’s important. You give money to the poor, there’s a party and costumes and drinking until you are not-exactly-shitfaced drunk, thought that’s somewhat debatable. I wasn’t old enough to drink the last time I celebrated it, which was _years_ ago but I’m really excited now. I always tried to kind of celebrate Hanukah by lighting candles by myself and eating greasy food, but you can’t hold a costume party by yourself you know! And I mean, I guess I could have gone to a temple for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but I…” Tamaki was reading the look in Haruhi’s eyes of utter confusion and trailed off.

“Well that sounds really exciting senpai, I hope you have a good time.” She grinned honestly, and Tamaki melted, putting too much of his weight on Kyoya. Kyoya’s vision was almost completely obscured, but it was just as well because he could feel Haruhi looking at him, trying to meet his eye. “Anyway, I have to get back to shopping.”

“Why don’t we all do something together! The three of us can—”

“I have to buy presents for you too you know, and you can’t know what it is ahead of time.”

When Haruhi was gone, Kyoya wiped his glasses again, looking at Tamaki’s pink nose and red ears, his lips stained from his candy apple, and his eyes far away.

“There’s a synagogue in Tokyo, if you ever wanted to go,” Kyoya said. He had actually googled it upon finding out Tamaki was Jewish, and then, feeling inadequate about what he’d learned, never said anything about it. “There’s also a Jewish community center too, it’s not that far if you’d wanted to go I could have—”

Tamaki laughed it off. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“I could have gone with you.”

“You can go with me now.” Tamaki turned fully to Kyoya, their arms still linked together so that they were practically embracing in the middle of a crowded chocolate shop.

“Tamaki,” there was a warning in his tone, but Kyoya wasn’t sure who it was for, or what he was warning against.

“Please Kyoya.”

“You should take Haruhi.”

“Haruhi doesn’t want to go to France and she won’t like the costume parties or the drinking and her English isn’t good enough to speak with any of my family in depth, so she’d have to spend the whole time talking to me or my parents.”

Kyoya opened his mouth to object, but when he looked up Tamaki’s face was inching closer until they were nose to nose. Tamaki’s nose was cold and wet and soft and he was more than close enough to kiss and it probably looked like they were kissing and they absolutely could not be kissing under any circumstances.

“Come to France with me. And when we come back we can enter the ice sculpture competition.”

Kyoya wanted to say no. He wanted to tell Tamaki his limits, to be honest and upfront and cut this off before it got out of hand. But instead he shrugged, and accepted the disappoint Tamaki would feel when he realized the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr ](http://www.stories-n-things.tumblr.com)


	3. Jack Frost Nipping at Your Pharmaceutical Drugs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyoya tries to save the day meanwhile Kyoya's father worries that disaster is on the horizon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual if you have concerns, favourite lines, suggestions requests etc. tell me here or on my [tumblr](http://www.stories-n-things.tumblr.com/ask)
> 
> If you have good ice puns drop a comment and see if you can inspire a new chapter title!

 

 

Several deep freezers at the largest Ootori hospital had broken and Kyoya needed to fix it. Not the machines themselves. No, there were already people working on repairing the machines. There were people sorting the contents of the freezers to other locations. But Ootoris weren’t ones to waste talent, and if Kyoya could keep the organs or whatever cold, then he would do it while everyone scrambled to fix the issue.

“The machines themselves have a regulatory defect,” his father was saying. They were driving to the hospital, just the two of them. The security team didn’t know about Kyoya’s powers and it wasn’t unusual for Kyoya or one of his siblings to accompany their father on a trip to the hospital. “Some of the freezers were much colder then they were supposed to be, some issue with the valve, and eventually the excess cold broke the…” his father made a gesture like he was pulling something down, one hand on the wheel. “Not the lever, but the spiral you turn to engage the lever. It snapped from the cold and now the freezers won’t close.”

Kyoya nodded from the passenger seat. The idea that the freezers had lost control of their freezing power and broke themselves was not lost on Kyoya. It was something he had feared since he was little.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, but Kyoya didn’t answer it.

“I’ll take you down to the basement first, you can lower the temperature, but eventually you’ll have to be more focused on the temporary storage carts.”

Kyoya nodded again. His father cast him a glance that wasn’t piercing, but was definitely looking under the surface of Kyoya’s expression.

Earlier, Kyoya’s father and a business partner had been talking in his father’s study. The partner had dropped hints that perhaps Kyoya might be interested in his daughter. Perhaps, the business partner said, some sort of get together could be arranged, some sort of interview. Perhaps there would be little feet running around in no time. Kyoya’s stomach had lurched at the idea, bile rising in his throat.

But then, Kyoya’s father had insisted Kyoya was too young to even consider the possibility. He’d said it with a candor and sincerity that Kyoya hadn’t been expecting and didn’t know how to react to. There was no hidden meaning, no double talk.

Before, Kyoya had seen his future laid out, a set of prescribed steps. Kyoya assumed he was destined to marry some girl for position, feelings be damned. The idea that his father had a more complex plan had never occurred to him.

Or perhaps Yoshio Ootori was waiting until he knew whether Kyoya would be heir before making hasty marriage interviews.

“We’ll have to stop by the morgue as well,” his father said. “I spoke to the head coroner and she’s clearing out room for the organs, which should be fine. There’s space for it. It’s the…you won’t know what that is…it’s the medical ingredients, pharmaceuticals, antiseptics, and chemicals mixtures I’m more concerned about.”

Kyoya paused. “There’s nothing life threatening going on, is there? No delayed transplants?”

“No. But, the drugs, from de Grantaine Pharmaceuticals, are very sensitive before they’re mixed for use. We don’t have an unlimited supply and we need to establish a firm customer base before we make more. Losing them now is a serious concern. But no one will die. There are safe guards to ensure we have enough excess storage for urgent matters.”

But de Grantaine Pharmaceuticals could still take a big hit financially, which would definitely shift the power balance in Tamaki’s parent’s relationship if not directly cause the drug company to lose footing in the Japanese market.

Kyoya’s phone buzzed again. He fished it out of his pocket, but it was only Haruhi.

_I told you I really can’t take the time off to go to France._

Kyoya was trying to get her along on the trip with Tamaki. Tamaki needed someone steady in his life. A rock to hold onto. Someone calm, like a pool of still water. That someone could very easily be Haruhi.

Someone else texted Kyoya immediately after. Kuze.

_I just want to say that I know we disagree, but I’m not homophobic or anything._

Kyoya gritted his teeth. Kuze’s fiancé had seen Tamaki and him at the Christmas Market. Kuze obviously had the wrong idea, but wouldn’t be dissuaded.

 _If anyone is giving you trouble, I’ll be sure to talk to them._ Kuze continued but Kyoya’s hands were already tightening on his phone.

Pity. This was _pity._

He didn’t need Kuze’s pity and half assed remarks and he didn’t need Kuze’s fiancé gossiping. She wasn’t a bad person, but, clearly, couldn’t shut her mouth. And now there were real consequence, business deals that would be effected, and if de Grantaine Pharmaceuticals took a hit right before someone figured out their heir apparent happened to like men…

And that discounted what would happen to the Ootori Group. Kyoya didn’t even want to think about what his Father had in store. Whatever it was, Kyoya could deal with it when it happened.

The problem was that Kyoya had been right. His friendship with Tamaki was indeed selfish. Kyoya would only drag Tamaki down with him. Tamaki didn’t see it, because Tamaki saw the best in everyone, but Kyoya was like an weight at Tamaki’s ankle, holding him back, pulling him into deep water where he would surely drown.

Kyoya needed to fix this. He needed to get everything back on track. First, Kyoya would start with the de Grantaine Pharmaceuticals issues. Then, he’d find Tamaki someone who deserved him. Someone who was fit to be his spouse.

“How long until we arrive?” Kyoya’s voice was low. His father didn’t react to it.

 “Half an hour,” his father said.

Kyoya might not be able to create blasts of winter magic from his finger tips, but if he could refrigerate millions of dollars’ worth of drugs, at least he could do something.

 

#

 

 Yoshio Ootori surveyed his son from afar. Kyoya was examining the drugs, with convincing superficiality. His hands fiddled with the bottles and his mind was working, no doubt, on preserving every drug in the entire basement without killing anyone in the process.

The coroner was looking at Yoshio and Yoshio’s eyes slid from his son to members of the hospital staff, squirming to get everything packed appropriately.

“Is this really that big of an issue that _he_ needs to be here?” one of the nurses whispered to his fellow. Yoshio didn’t blame them. His presence was off-putting enough without the added authority.

He would have turned back to Kyoya had it not been suspicious. In the car, Kyoya had been unusually guarded. He was always guarded to some extent, but it was clear Kyoya had played the wrong emotion. Usually Kyoya was meticulous in matching his expression to the situation, but before, when Kyoya should have been expressing concern, and fake determination, he had settled for a sullen silence and a fierce resolve that almost seemed genuine. Something was clearly off. Still, Yoshio wasn’t going to pry. Yoshio’s mother had dug her nails into all of Yoshio’s secrets, and, like a butcher, had cut them up and laid them bare in front of him so she could see. If Kyoya wanted to talk, Yoshio would be waiting.

The room now was chilly, but not the -40 that the drugs required. Yet even from here Yoshio could see the medicine was frozen solid, not releasing any steam as workers in thick thermal gloves crammed them into crates and shipped them off. Things were going perfectly.

Kyoya’s control was getting better, growing with his power.

But Kyoya was shivering.

Kyoya never dressed warm enough, but he was in a thick winter coat and boots now, expelling all the ice magic from within. He shouldn’t be shivering.

The last time this had happened, Kyoya had started losing control of his powers, freezing spots of grass on his school lawn. And then he’d frozen his bed, his couch, various fixtures of the house. He’d frozen himself in his bath.

If this had happened to Yoshio, he would have screamed for his father to help. But Kyoya, silent, resolved, had chipped away at the ice with the hand-held showerhead. When, he’d gotten out, Kyoya had been rushed to the hospital as they assessed him for nerve damage and hypothermia. Yoshio had paced the Emergency Room, thankful that Kyoya’s powers hadn’t been that strong, thankful that he had only frozen the top layer of the water and not all the way through.

But Kyoya was stronger now. And if he lost control, the consequences were unthinkable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, feel free to reach me here or at my [tumblr](http://www.stories-n-things.tumblr.com/ask)


	4. the Ice of the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyoya makes some good decisions and some bad ones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering why did I add all these Family OC? Symbolism. Also character development.
> 
> Enjoy.

In his weaker moments, Kyoya pictured an imaginary future he would never see. In his mind’s eye, Kyoya saw a little house. Or rather, a small, well-appointed mansion, which he and Tamaki could share with their made-up children. Every time Tamaki referred to them as a married couple, every time Tamaki said, “our kids” or “our family” or “our house” Kyoya added to it. He hadn’t constructed this house intentionally, or at least, he hadn’t set out to create a fake life for himself and Tamaki. But sometimes he wondered what it would be like. He entertained the idea, the house, the children. And when he got new information he filtered it in. Every time Tamaki showed him a piece of interesting furniture, every time Tamaki stared too long at some architecture.

 The house was never going to happen. He and Tamaki were never going to have kids, and Kyoya wasn’t wasting away time thinking that they would. But when he saw an end table that Tamaki would like, Kyoya smiled.

Now, Kyoya stood in the forest at the back of the Ootori property. He had passed his grandfather’s house, the cottage that marked where the garden ended and the woods began.

The temperature in this spot was below freezing, thanks to Kyoya, which allowed him (with the use of a hose) to put down the foundation of ice. He couldn’t sculpt things out the air. He couldn’t magic them into being. He didn’t know his way around an ice pick. Instead he was building from the ground up. Like someone making a miniature doll house.

He was building the fake house of his dreams.

This house was too small to be an estate like the Ootori mansion, but it was too big to be a little hideaway like Kyoya’s grandfather’s house.

Really Kyoya should say his grandfather’s lover’s house.

Kyoya had loved that house when he was small. He had loved it like he had loved his inexplicably Russian grandfather. Kyoya wasn’t part Russian. Kyoya’s father wasn’t part Russian and neither was his mother and yet in the little house that Kyoya could see out his bedroom window lived Kyoya’s Russian grandfather, hidden away from the world.

When Kyoya was very little he hadn’t questioned it. Kyoya’s father often called him Dad instead of Uncle and his grandfather ( _dedushka_ in Russian, which Kyoya had a passing familiarity with) was just there. Both his grandfathers had been so happy together and Kyoya remembered looking at pictures, he remembered them smiling so big.

Kyoya grew up understanding some Russian, though stringing together sentences was beyond him. He grew up eating homemade Russian foods and learning how to say Russian nicknames. He grew up learning that Kyoya had a grandfather he wasn’t supposed to tell people about. He grew up learning that when said grandfather died, Kyoya wasn’t supposed to cry. He wasn’t supposed to admit he cared so much, because he was only Kyoya’s grandfather in secret.

Kyoya had never met his grandmother. She had died when Kyoya’s dad was 19, but he was always supposed to pray to her and honour her just like his mother. But he was supposed to leave his grandfather alone.

Once, the day after his grandfather died, Kyoya caught his father crying. He was sobbing in his room and Kyoya, age nine, stood outside listening. Kyoya’s father was crying for his own father, his father who he knew and loved longer and better than the woman who had given birth to him.

Kyoya had only ever seen him cry one other time: after the car crash that killed his mother and twin sister. Kyoya and his family had gone to their graves, buried at the Shinto shrine his mother’s family had owned. Everyone had turned back to head to the car, but his father had wanted one more minute alone.

It was easy for Kyoya to sneak away. No one paid him any attention now, not with Izuki dead.

This was perhaps Kyoya’s second earliest memory. His first was the crash. Hauling himself out of the car, out of the water. The fire. The ice. The blood. The sound the car made as it sank. The silence once it was under. His mother and sister buried in metal coffins trapped under a frozen over river.

His second earliest memory was sneaking away to see his father crying on his sister’s grave. The mumbling was incoherent at first, but the longer Kyoya stayed, watching snot bubble in his father’s nose, watching his shoulders shake, his head drop and fat splotches of water fall onto the ground—the longer Kyoya stayed the better he made out the words.

“I’m sorry.”

Kyoya’s father had not cried for the brief seventy-two hours after the crash when Kyoya couldn’t be located, when he was presumed dead. But he cried then. For Izuki. _Only_ for Izuki.

And he cried again when Kyoya’s grandfather had died.

Yoshio Ootori cried in his bedroom until he couldn’t breathe and young Kyoya crept away to the home shrine they had for Kyoya’s mother and he stood on his tip toes in front of it, staring at the tablets of his dead mother and dead sister and his dead aunts and uncles and cousins.

He could mourn them. He couldn’t have saved them, but he could sit and cry and mourn them openly, but for Kyoya’s grandfather, no one was allowed to care.

At seventeen years old, Kyoya understood what had happened. But that only made things worse. He couldn’t go through that. Kyoya couldn’t _be_ that.

He had resolved himself to finding a woman and marrying her, but the moment he thought about children, the more he realized he wanted some, the more he recoiled at the idea of giving his children over to someone else. It would be better to raise them himself than let someone he didn’t trust have equal custody. It would be better to not have children at all, than to give them away. It would better to live with the hole in life than to see his hope, his family, corrupted by someone else.

Kyoya built the miniature ice house that he could never live in, made for the children he would never have. He wasn’t going to enter it into the stupid sculpture contest. This was going to be a secret. Like Kyoya’s grandfather.

 

#

 

Maybe trying to bake in his grandfather’s house by the woods was too poignant. But later today, after the sun went down, Hanukkah would start and Kyoya didn’t want Tamaki to spend it alone. He’d attempted to make chocolate gelt, but the circles looked more like hockey pucks than fake confectionary coins.

Would Hanukkah cookies be all right? Or was that too much like Christmas? Kyoya had spent hours searching on his phone and it was two in the afternoon and he still didn’t have an answer. The gelt was done anyway, laying in sheets on the over polished wooden table.

Kyoya hadn’t been in here in years, but he couldn’t use the main kitchen to cook. So, he took in the dusty old spoons on the wall, the pictures of his grandfather, the pictures of his father, as a young boy. They were stuck to the fridge with magnets that looked like they were embroidered with flowers and vegetables, or otherwise were decked out in the white, blue, and red of the Russian flag. One picture, of Kyoya’s grandfather holding little baby Kyoya, was stuck to the fridge with a brass two headed eagle and another magnet Kyoya had hand painted in grade two to look like a tree.

Kyoya shook himself, rooting through dusty cupboards for some kind of Tupperware or inspiration. Tamaki had said he liked to eat oily food during Hanukkah, and the whole holiday was centered around oil lasting a long time right? Maybe Kyoya should fry something? How hard could that be?

Kyoya looked down at his chocolate splotched hand and imagined a flour spotted kitchen, sizzling oil spilling onto the floor, which Kyoya would have to clean. He wasn’t even supposed to be in here.

Cookies would be a safer bet. But god, Kyoya didn’t even _like_ sweets. And what was he going to do, show up at Tamaki’s house by himself with handmade chocolate so they could spend the night together?

No.

He collected the deformed chocolate circles into three containers and walked back to his house, hands bare, boots crunching in the snow. His tracks would be perfectly visible, but Kyoya focused outward, lowering the temperature high, high above him. Clouds began to form and Kyoya new, before the day was done, it was going to snow.

 

#

 

He'd thought Haruhi would be happy to see him. She was not.

“You expect me to drop everything to bake?”

“Look,” Kyoya said, shifting in Haruhi’s front entryway, which was not much of entryway to start with. “You heard Tamaki, he’s always been alone for holidays, I thought he might appreciate the company. And all right, if you need help baking I suppose I could be of assistance.”

“You didn’t invite anyone else in the host club over.” It wasn’t a question, but Kyoya ignored the tone.

“He wouldn’t want anyone else over.”

Haruhi sighed, eyes downcast, possibly cursing Kyoya for suggesting this, but also herself for agreeing.

“All right. You can start by getting out the roasted soybean flour from under the sink and the sugar from above the stove. Butter and eggs are in the fridge and let’s see…or maybe get out the rice flour instead. I’m not sure what type we should make.”

“I was thinking we make them Hanukkah themed. In some way.”

Haruhi pushed Kyoya into the kitchen, pointing to the fridge and under the sink as she became to pull out mixing bowls and whisks and measuring cups.

“Hmmm…I don’t know how we’re going to shape them into a menorah or something,” Haruhi mumbled.

“You could make them just white or blue I guess. Though I’m unsure if that’s a Jewish thing or an Is—”

“We.”

“What.”

“ _We’ll_ just make them white or blue.” There wasn’t a hint of doubt in her eyes. Unlike Kyoya’s father, there wasn’t something hard behind her expression, there was no mask of stone. But like Kyoya’s father, there was something unwavering about her that made Kyoya concede.

“All right, what are we going to do about icing then?”

Haruhi smiled.

The corner of Kyoya’s lips turned as he thought of Tamaki, even as his stomach did uncertain flips in the bottom of his gut.

#

 

“Ah!!” Tamaki jumped up and down in his foyer, talking armfuls of the containers from Kyoya and rushing to the kitchen. He squealed again and Kyoya resisted the urge to cast a knowing look at Haruhi.

“Aah!” Tamaki called out again and Kyoya and Haruhi took the remaining containers to the kitchen.

The kitchen space was wide, too stretched out. It looked like something from a high traffic restaurant, stainless steel everything, and flat cooktops. Oh, and marble counters of course, and a small island with light wood bar stools slotted in front of them.

Tamaki was opening the containers and spreading them out on the counter. He took one of Kyoya’s chocolate coins and tapped it experimentally on the top.

“What’s this?”

“It’s supposed to look like money.”

Tamaki’s face lit up, his gaze intent, focused. Kyoya shifted, rubbing at the gooseflesh on his arms, but Tamaki didn’t look away.

“Hanukkah gelt.”

Kyoya broke the eye contact, opening up another container.

“We also made cookies,” Haruhi took one of them now, chewing thoughtfully. “I’m not sure how they turned out, the icing sugar doesn’t match the other more subtle flavours but…” She shrugged and Kyoya turned so he didn’t see Tamaki’s reaction.

Instead, he sat down at the counter as Tamaki fumbled for plates, piling them high with food.

“What’s this?” Tamaki pried open a Styrofoam container, topping his plate with something greasy. He took a bite of it experimentally, oil glistening on his lips, dripping down his chin in a way which was one part disgusting, one part endearing. Kyoya wanted to punch himself in the face for brining the container.

“Dough baked in duck fat,” Kyoya said. “I stopped by to get some on the way here.”

Tamaki popped another piece in his mouth and moaned.

“I love it.”

But to Kyoya, it was too close to saying “I love you.”

“Is there something we’re supposed to do?” Haruhi asked. “With the candles or something?”

“I have an oil menorah, up in my room, but I already lit it, it’s like eight, how long were you making cookies for?”

The first three hours had been Haruhi discovering why Kyoya hadn’t attempted to bake cookies by himself, but they’d managed to get into the swing of things eventually. The decorating had taken the longest. By the end of it Kyoya had flour all over his face, paste coating his hands and wrists and even in the crook of his elbow. Not to mention there had been icing dotting Haruhi’s father apron, which was neither frilly nor pink, but which Kyoya found very disagreeable for other reasons. The entire process was ridiculous because Kyoya didn’t even like sweets.

The important part was that Kyoya didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to hear what Tamaki had to say about them bonding and he didn’t want to have Tamaki picturing him baking. So, he deflected.

“Why is the menorah in your room?”  Kyoya asked. “Isn’t it supposed to be outside by the entrance or some place people can see it?”

Tamaki’s eyes widened, like he hadn’t expected Kyoya to know that.

“A lot of people just put there’s by the window, and there’s a window in my room. And nowhere to put it in the foyer window or outside.”

“Couldn’t you just ask someone to move a table there or something?” Haruhi mumbled, crumbs of cookie spewing onto the counter. Tamaki chided her about her manners instead of answering but Kyoya had a feeling he knew.

Tamaki’s window faced the side of their house, a menorah there wouldn’t be visible through the front, but it would be visible to their neighbours, to the people on the other street. A menorah at the front of his house would be visible only to his father and grandmother every time they drove by. Tamaki wasn’t one to deny himself and who he was, but he was already on a balance beam with his family. Better to have them be ignorant of Tamaki’s faith than to have it rejected. Better to have him pretend they would accept it than to have to fight them. And Tamaki would fight them here. He wouldn’t fight them about being illegitimate, or French, but this was a line Tamaki would not stand to have crossed. It was a line he was prepared to die on.

“I have to be home in half an hour so if there’s something you want to do Tamaki, we might as well do it.” Haruhi was feigning disinterest, but she was sitting too straight, the balls of her feet pressed to the floor, ready to stand.

Tamaki took a long time to think before answering.

“Snow ball fight.”

“That doesn’t seem very religious,” Kyoya popped a piece of the duck fat dough into his mouth. It was greasy, and Kyoya could taste the fat, and the salt and the savoury buttery flavour.

“Or we could build a snowman in the backyard, it started to snow and I thought it would be fun,” Tamaki said. With Tamaki grinning like that, Kyoya knew he and Haruhi had already lost. Kyoya let everything drag out a moment longer. He chewed his food slowly. He watched Tamaki bite into the chocolate circle Kyoya had made.

“Please?” Tamaki asked, eyes wide, dewy. God damn it. Haruhi sighed, not quite dreamily, but it didn’t matter. She mumbled something getting her boots from the front. Kyoya pushed his plate back from the table as Tamaki stood up to follow her.

“Wait.”

Tamaki paused, eyes crinkling with laughter and if Kyoya wanted to say something he would have to have it now. Tamaki didn’t want to have this conversation. He just didn’t know it yet.

“Yeah?” Tamaki smiled and Kyoya’s resolve hardened. Friends helped friends work out their emotional issues, even if it hurt, even if it would leave a bitter taste in Tamaki’s mouth and drive a wedge between them. That was what Kyoya wanted. Space. Distance.

“Kyoya?” Tamaki asked again as Kyoya stood up, easing over to Tamaki by the kitchen doorway.

“Why didn’t you find other Jewish people to celebrate the holidays with. If it’s important to you.”

Tamaki shrugged. “It doesn’t—”

“You don’t want to burden your grandmother. You don’t want her to think that you’re more loyal to your mom’s side than hers.”

Tamaki’s posture changed instantly. He squared his shoulders he stood straighter so that, for once, it was clear which of them was taller.

“I didn’t pretend not to be Jewish, if that’s what you’re implying, though for your sake I hope it’s not.” His tone had dropped and it was harder than Kyoya had ever heard it. “I would _never_ do that.”

“I wasn’t implying that. I was just saying you don’t want to talk with her about it.”

“It’s not like that.”

“You didn’t talk to your dad about it.”

“I rarely have time to talk to him about anything.”

Kyoya gripped Tamaki’s bicep. It was harder than he expected, and hot underneath his fingers. Or maybe Kyoya was too cold.

Kyoya leveled his gaze at Tamaki. He didn’t have to say anything. He’d learned this trick from his father. Silence had weight.  Stillness was loud.

“I always celebrate the holidays. I just…” Tamaki cleared his throat. “Every time I do something...it reminds me of home. When I came here I didn’t want to constantly be reminded of what I’d lost. It’s lonely to be by myself, but its…sometimes it’s easier to be alone, than it is to be lonely in front of a group of people.” There was truth behind those words. Pain in the set of Tamaki’s jaw. Regret in his eyes. Perhaps Kyoya had been wrong. But still, there was something else. If Tamaki invited his father to celebrate Hanukkah (or reminded his father that Tamaki was celebrating Hanukkah), than there was a chance Yuzuru Suoh would say no. There was a chance that Tamaki would be rejected. There was a chance it would lead to a fight. Kyoya considered it.

“Your grandmother owes you, Tamaki. She has no right to—”

“Are you guys coming?” Haruhi called from the foyer.

“In a minute,” Kyoya didn’t give a second for Tamaki to speak. “No one who makes you choose sides like that really loves you.”

“My father chose sides.”

“No, I mean, sides of _yourself._ She’s making you compartmentalize—”

“I don’t want to do this now Kyoya. Okay. It’s over.”

“You forgive too easily.”

“That’s what _grandmere_ says.”

“I just—”

“You’re worried.”

Kyoya couldn’t afford to shift or look away now, but he dropped his hand from Tamaki’s arm. This was getting too close. Tamaki leaned forward. He was forging a connection between them and it was going to end badly.

It was going to _end._

And Kyoya’s breath caught, picking up. He shuddered, as if he was already outside, arm deep in the snow. This wasn’t right. Something was wrong. Kyoya’s words were failing him and this body’s temperature was out of whack.

Tamaki was looking at him, pulling the same trick Kyoya had just used. The truth was a stone lump in Kyoya’s mouth, but it tumbled from his mouth, stiff, heavy.

“You deserve better,” Kyoya said. His chill went away. Tamaki’s unblinking gaze did not.

“Come with me. To France.”

“You deserve better.” Kyoya repeated, not sure Tamaki understood. How could he explain to Tamaki that meeting his family would doom them both? How could he explain that without making it seem as if Kyoya was just like Tamaki’s father, picking sides of himself to show and sides of himself to hide.

“Fine, then at least say you’ll some with me to the Alps in February. _Maman_ has never been because she’s been too sick, and it’s out first time going up there. I’ll be really lonely if you don’t show up, it’ll just be like my parents are on their honeymoon.” Tamaki took Kyoya’s hands, intertwining their fingers. Tamaki’s hands were like a furnace, burning steady and strong. Kyoya was suddenly dizzy. Not sick. But lightheaded. The situation was slipping from his grasp.

What would Kyoya’s father say?

Kyoya should say no. He should pull away and tell Tamaki to take Haruhi, But Tamaki leaned in, resting his forehead on Kyoya’s crown. He was too close to see his face, but Kyoya could smell his breath like chocolate and duck fat.

“Haruhi…”

“Can wait by the foyer until you tell me you’ll come with me.” The pad of Tamaki’s thumb was caressing the back of Kyoya’s hand in small too soft, too dry, too warm circles. “I want you to come. Please, for me.” And even though he couldn’t see him, Kyoya knew Tamaki wasn’t pulling the puppy dogs eyes. Instead, he pushed closer until their noses touched, just like in the chocolate shop. It was too close to be platonic.

“You don’t need me there.”

“But I _want_ you.”

A trickle of sweat rolled down Kyoya’s neck, trailing down his back.

“Okay,” Kyoya said. Even though he knew it was the wrong thing to say, even though he knew they were barrelling towards a line they couldn’t cross. “I’ll go.”


	5. Honeymoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Romantic Tension, clouds and the inevitable realization that Kyoya has been trying to put off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Any comments or questions or favourite lines you can tell me here or on my tumblr [here](http://www.stories-n-things.tumblr.com)

 

The problem with the Alps was that they were freezing, even without Kyoya manipulating them to snow more. The problem with this trip in particular was that the airplane had lost Kyoya’s luggage. The private jet wouldn’t have lost the luggage, but Tamaki’s parents had taken the jet from France and so Kyoya and Tamaki had had to fly Frist Class and somehow, his luggage had still vanished.

At first, Kyoya had been sure it would turn up. He and Tamaki had had dinner at a nice restaurant, Tamaki with a glass of red and Kyoya with a cup of tea that, despite steaming uncontrollably, was always lukewarm when Kyoya brought it to his lips.

Something was wrong. Not just with the luggage, but with his powers. He was freezing the things he touched without meaning too, and this had never happened before. The only time his powers were out of whack was when he didn’t use them. But Kyoya had been using them, he had been expelling them from his body nonstop.  Kyoya used his powers to make it snow outside, in fat, fluffy disks. He used his powers to drop and drop the temperature in town and somehow push whatever magic was within him out.

For the rest of the meal, his food, thoroughly cooked and fresh from the oven, seemed tepid.

The meal was fine, cool, but decadent. Yet when Kyoya stepped outside, his skin was ten below zero. He dug his hands in his pockets. They should have gone back to the hotel anyway. They should have gone immediately and waited for Tamaki’s parents flight, which was due in a few hours.

Instead, Tamaki stuck his hand out to catch yen sized snowflakes that were drifting through the air. He had flakes of white dotting his eyelashes and floating to land in his mane, catching the evening lamp light like glitter. Kyoya swallowed. Tamaki’s mouth was turned up in delight and his eyes were twinkling as much as his hair.

All at once it was too much.

Kyoya left for the hotel by himself, legs stiff as he pumped them, forcing them onward. He walked two blocks without looking back or answering the phone vibrating nonstop in his pocket. Tamaki could be lost. He could be worried. He would think Kyoya was upset with him.

The snow came down harder now, faster. Kyoya pushed into the hotel lobby, not as nice as anything the Suoh’s owned, but decked out in real fur and wood with a brass chandelier suspended twenty feet above Kyoya’s head.

Kyoya checked in easily, heading straight up to the suite he and Tamaki had booked together. He needed a bath.

The bathroom was cavernous. Almost as big as Haruhi’s entire apartment, with a huge soaker tub big enough for two people, a long chaise pressed against a wall and a double wide counter with sink you could wash Antoinette in. The features were quartz and porcelain, accented with dark wood, a hint of rustic. The scented candles by the sink were vanilla and Kyoya stopped to lit them, for the heat rather than the smell.

He undressed slowly, and sat in the dry tub as the water level rose to meet him. He could still smell the frigid outside air, the stink of icicles and street vendors and Tamaki’s sweat.

The tub was half full when Tamaki pushed at the locked bathroom door, and Kyoya sank lower into the water.

“Kyoya,”

He didn’t want to have this conversation. This—why did you leave? Don’t you like me? What’s your problem?— conversation.

“Kyoya, your luggage hasn’t arrived yet.” Tamaki managed to unlock the bathroom door form the outside and stepped in, staring at himself in the mirror and not Kyoya, naked in the tub. “I tried calling you about it. I was saying we could stop and get you some pajamas.”

“I don’t want to go out again.” Kyoya sank deeper into the water until he could see his thighs, scarred and red no matter the temperature. At hot springs, Kyoya was always the first one there and the last to leave. He hated people looking at them. He hated that they would always ask questions. If Kyoya wanted them to know he would have told them. After all, who wanted to recount the accident that led to the death of their family?

“I guess you can borrow something of mine in the meantime,” Tamaki said. ‘The airline did find your luggage, but it won’t arrive until midday tomorrow.”

“Great.”

Tamaki was hovering at the doorway, hands fidgeting. “I’ll just bring you something now.”

“Sure.”

When Tamaki closed the door, Kyoya sunk fully underwater, bringing his hands up to his face. His heart was beating too fast and it didn’t make any sense. None of this made sense. He just wanted to not feel anything for Tamaki and for Tamaki to not feel anything for him and they would both go on to lead normal lives as close friends.

“Hey.” It was Tamaki’s voice.

Kyoya startled out of the water. Tamaki put the pajamas down by the sink and sat on the lounge facing Kyoya. “Are you sick? Should I get some medicine or…?”

“No. I’m just tired.”

Tamaki nodded, because he was graceful and would pretend to believe most lies that came out of Kyoya’s mouth. His hair was damp now, the snow melted, and his eyelashes were watery, like a reflecting pool. He looked pretty enough that Kyoya wanted to throw something at him. Something small like a grape or stuff animal, just large enough to express how utterly maddening it was to look at Tamaki’s face.

“I was thinking we could plan out our sculpture for the contest—”

“We’re not entering. I can’t shoot ice beams Tamaki.”

“So?  We could try and carve like, a character or something, like the first character of my name, or maybe one from yours and one from mine, Tama-Kyo, or something? If you can make some parts of the ice cold and others not, then maybe we could just,” Tamaki made a series of hacking gestures and banged his elbow into the wall. Kyoya smiled despite himself, biting his lip.

“Hack with what? A chainsaw?”

“Sure! We should do something together, once we get back from France.”

Kyoya’s gut flattened out, disappeared, and came back and disappeared again until he was high strung. He was as light and stretched as the beginning of a panic attack.

“Tamaki.”

“It’s just a contest. It’s something we could do together. A tradition.”

The problem wasn’t just the contest. The problem was tradition. A tradition Tamaki could imagine too far into the future. The problem was making plans together when Tamaki should be making plans for marriage. For something better.

“Enter the contest with Haruhi,” Kyoya said.

“Maybe you should enter a dog grooming contest with Haruhi.”

“What the fuck?”

“Sorry, I thought we were just suggesting things to do with Haruhi that she wouldn’t want to do and which are only enjoyable to us when we do them together.” Tamaki stood up, too fast, shoulder’s tight. There was something Kyoya hadn’t seen on Tamaki’s face in a long time. “I’ll leave you to your bath.” Tamaki didn’t look back when he left and Kyoya wanted to sink underwater and never come back up, but the thought startled him so much that he didn’t move. He ran his hand through the water, but it wasn’t warm anymore.

If his powers kept acting up like this, things could get serious very quickly. At this rate, he was going to get hypothermia and certainly _that_ would solve Tamaki’s marriage problem.

But Kyoya didn’t want to die.

He was an Ootori, and above that a survivor. If he died now, then his mother’s sacrifice was for nothing. If he died now, then his sister’s death was in vain.

Kyoya took a deep breath, stepping out of the tub, foot slippery on the marble floor.

The pajamas were too big. The sweater, seemed like it was supposed to be, falling off one shoulder, coming down to the top of his thigh. The bottoms wouldn’t stay up. They were silk, with buttons and the moment Kyoya let them go they fell down his waist like his hips weren’t there.

Boxers and Tamaki’s sweater on, Kyoya stared at himself in the mirror. He looked like the stereotype of a Movie Protagonist’s lover about to come out of the bedroom while a Plot Important meeting was taking place. The Protagonist would either blush and stammer, or act like everything was okay, as the audience smiled at the fanservice.

But it would be embarrassing to walk out there holding the waist line of his pants.

Even then, it didn’t matter if he looked like a stereotype. Only Tamaki was here and he was as unlikely to pass judgement as he was to actually understand what Kyoya looked like.

Kyoya looked down the burn marks on his thighs. When he was young they had been all up his legs, but as he grew and the skin shifted they’d moved up.

Fuck it.

Kyoya stepped out the washroom. The suite’s living area was pressed up against a ten-foot floor to ceiling window, and Tamaki was sprawled in an old leather wingback chair, watching snow fall outside.

It would be easy to sneak past him to Kyoya’s room.

It would also be the coward’s way out.

The wood was pleasantly warm beneath Kyoya’s feet as he crept, the balls of his feet slipping over the dark floor silently. And then he stopped. Outside the snow was coming down violently. You needed wind for a blizzard, but Kyoya had never seen snow fall in sheets like rain before.

“Kyoya? I heard the door open, if you want to just go to bed, that’s fine, but don’t just stand around…” Tamaki turned around, eyes falling to his legs and then back up to his face. Kyoya walked to him slowly, pausing by the chair to stare outside.

He had done this. Intentionally or not, this snow was unnatural. Just like Kyoya.

“What are you doing out here?” Kyoya asked. Tamaki was dressed in thick flannel pajama bottoms, the flannel top opened up onto a plain white tee shirt.

“I was just looking.”

“You should go to sleep.”

Tamaki snaked his arms around Kyoya’s waist, leaned his head on Kyoya’s side. “It’s pretty.”

“It’s destructive.”

“Most pretty things are.”

“That’s morbid.”

Tamaki grinned, pulling Kyoya onto his lap. Tamaki was like the floor, heated, cozy, and Kyoya let himself be plied into a comfortable position, legs dangling over the side of the chair, back resting half on Tamaki, half on the chair’s wing.

“I just meant that…I dunno. It’s just that foxes are cute, like bears, volcanoes and poison tree frogs and they would kill you, but it doesn’t make them less beautiful.”

“A great opening pick-up line. ‘You remind me of a tree frog.’”

Tamaki nudged Kyoya and Kyoya’s heart jumped, picking up the pace like it had a plane to catch. Tamaki’s sweater smelled of Tamaki, and Tamaki smelled of Tamaki even more. His hair soft on Kyoya’s cheek, his nose wet where it was nestled into the crook of Kyoya’s shoulder.

“Well, I guess you have experience. I was homeschooled, so the first time I even got to know a girl my age was in Japan. And everyone already had _thoughts_ about me.” And Tamaki already had _thoughts_ about himself.

“I don’t know where you’re getting the idea I have any romantic experience.”

“Look at you,” Tamaki hummed, sending vibrating up Kyoya’s sides. “Who wouldn’t want to date you?”

“Because I am so approachable and kind hearted?” Kyoya snorted. “If someone gave me their heart I’d break it.”

“I think…” Tamaki paused and turned, hot breath, hitting the corner of Kyoya’s mouth. His arms tightened on Kyoya’s waist and Kyoya’s throat tightened and loosened all at once. “I think, if I gave you my heart, you’d cherish it.”

Kyoya forgot to breathe. His heart was still beating, of its own accord, but all voluntary processes shut down. This was too much. This was being out in the snow all over again, but a million times worse and Kyoya should run away. But looking at his legs, something made him want to be brave.

But that something wasn’t enough.

“We should go to bed, you’re clearly overtired if you’re talking nonsense.”

Tamaki smiled and there was a glint of mischief there that Kyoya caught a second before Tamaki stood, lifting him in the air and carrying Kyoya bridal style. Kyoya’s arm tightened on Tamaki’s neck so he wouldn’t fall. He swore quietly, glaring.

“What are you doing?” Kyoya hissed.

“You said we should go to sleep so I’m taking you to bed.”

“You’re…”

Tamaki was already starting towards the room he was staying in, struggling slightly under Kyoya’s weight. Half of Kyoya wanted to struggle and bear the weight of falling down, but another part of him was processing Tamaki’s words.

“You’re _taking_ me…?”

“Yes, I’m taking you to bed!”

“Do you hear yourself when you talk or is it all incoherent chatter before it falls out of your mouth?”

Tamaki laughed. But he was already outside his door trying to open the door without putting Kyoya down. His arms jostled underneath Kyoya’s legs, and all at once the feeling of skin on skin was too slick and too much.

“I have fully functional legs you can put me down now.”

“In a second. I meant I was carrying you to bed.”

“This is _your_ room.”

Tamaki rolled his eyes as he pushed open the door with his foot and dumped Kyoya on the bed. Kyoya could have easily left then, and gone back to the room he was staying in. Instead Kyoya stretched, the silky comforter brushing against the exposed skin on his thighs. It had been a long time since he’d worn anything that ended above the knee.

The room itself was elegant, clean pressed bed, smoothly paneled closet and two bedside tables fashioned from solid blocks of walnut. One of them had a lamp and a phone to call the concierge. A thermos steamed on the other side table and Kyoya smirked, reaching for it.

His powers weren’t show stopping magic, but there was one other trick he thought Tamaki might appreciate.

“What are you doing?” Tamaki climbed onto the bed behind Kyoya. He pulled Kyoya carefully towards the center of the bed while Kyoya held his hand above the cup. Tamaki was busy kicking up blankets to put around them, but Kyoya focused on the air above the cup.

“Watch.” Carefully Kyoya cooled the air, and the steam began to coalesce, and thicken. Kyoya’s back tensed as Tamaki drew near, his chest heaving into Kyoya, his chin hovering over Kyoya’s shoulder, watching the cloud form, silent.

Kyoya shuddered.

With the cloud fully formed, Kyoya withdrew his hand and motioned for Tamaki to touch it.

“You can make _clouds?_ ”

“Clouds are made when warm water vapour rises and meets cold air on top, as long as there’s steaming water, I can create cold air.”

Tamaki reached past Kyoya to run his fingers through the cloud. Tamaki’s hair tickled Kyoya’s nose, but he bit back a sneeze.

“This is amazing. Better than a sculpture.”

Kyoya swallowed, head suddenly light. He was too cold for his face to flush, but his heart was hammering in his ears.

“I can make it snow too. If there’s enough water vapour.”

Tamaki whipped around to face him, wet nose swiping across Kyoya’s cheek. If Kyoya turned they would be mouth to mouth and Tamaki’s lips would be soft, softer than his skin, and better. Something warm pressed against Kyoya jawlines. Lips? A flush of weightlessness washed through him.

Kyoya turned.

Tamaki’s chin.

It was better that way.

If he told Tamaki the truth, would it be okay? Would Tamaki believe him and let him be or would he kiss him, and insist it didn’t matter? Would he throw his life away—

“Can you spell something out in the clouds? If we had enough water vapour? Like a skywriter?”

“I guess.” Kyoya shifted and attempted to lean away, but Tamaki had an iron grip on Kyoya’s hand. He was going on about Kyoya’s hand being dry and clammy, but all Kyoya could focus on was the sound of his heart and the press of Tamaki’s chest to his back ever time he inhaled.

Tamaki must have said something else because the next thing that happened Tamaki’s hand were wrapped around his, taking the cup and putting it back down on the side table. The cloud did not move. Tamaki flapped his hands at it and tried blowing, but Kyoya let his control go, watching the water evaporate and turn invisible.

They spent the rest of the night talking about thermodynamics while curled under the covers. Tamaki wanted to know if he could freeze things as well as liquid nitrogen. He could. Tamaki wanted to know if Kyoya could warm things back up. He couldn’t. He could stop exerting cold, but then the rest of the world would have to fill in and make something warm again.

Tamaki wanted to know if Kyoya could stop global warming. Kyoya laughed and said it was worth a shot and soon enough they were both lying there with there eyes closed, face to face. Kyoya should have left an hour ago. He shouldn’t be pretending to sleep, his fingers shouldn’t be clasped in front of him, so close to Tamaki’s that they were almost touching.

For a while Kyoya enjoyed it, even as his stomach turned and he thought of his grandfathers. For one moment, he convinced himself this didn’t have to mean anything. And then, Tamaki said, quiet enough that he must have thought Kyoya asleep, Tamaki said, “I could get used to this.”

And in the room above them, the floor froze over.


	6. The Devil Freezes Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The magic takes and it takes and it catches up with all
> 
> Yoshio Ootori is fucking up and he knows and he knows 
> 
> They each get what they deserve in the end

Kyoya had spend the rest of the trip balanced on a precipice. He got his clothes back, he spent his time talking to Tamaki’s parents and his hand didn’t search for Tamaki’s under the table and his heart didn’t stutter when Tamaki’s face turned red from the wind.

He’d kept his distance, wielded his powers with an iron fist, and now Kyoya was back home in one piece.

Except the night he had gotten home he had stared up at the ceiling and watched the plaster crack. The glass he kept in his en suite for gargling water had shattered.

Kyoya calmed down. He tried and tried to calm down. On some level, it might have been a good idea to tell someone. But would they listen? Would they help? Whenever he had been dying before everyone had been content to standby and go about their own business.

On the third night he was home, things stopped breaking. Kyoya still shook, and piled blankets and blankets onto his bed, but nothing was leaking out of him. The magic was contained.

It was enough. It had to be enough.

Kyoya repeated it again and again to himself as if he might start to believe it.

 

#

 

Something was wrong with Kyoya. Something deep and insidious and _evil._ The idea was festering in Yoshio’s mind, almost an obsession, like the kind he had had as a child. The fear edging it’s away into this throat refused to abide and the worst was the Yoshio did not know. Yoshio didn’t know what was wrong Kyoya. He had been withdrawn lately and Yoshio did not like to pry. Yoshio did not like to wheedle things out of his children and he tried very hard not to be like his mother. His mother who had seen through everything, who could read people like a script and punished them when they deviated. She would have known what was going on. His mother who always knew when Yoshio didn’t want to see her. His mother who never let him be alone, who told him that he didn’t love her enough—that he was incapable of love—, that he was too smart to think he could fool her, too smart to miss that question on his test, too smart to only be second in his class—in high school, at Todai, anywhere. His mother who had told him he was ungrateful and undeserving and lazy until Yoshio started to believe it. His mother who he had feared. His mother who’s death had been a relief. And yet he was the only one he would think of who could have figured this out.

Maybe his mother was right. Maybe Yoshio was just someone who skated by on luck, got into university on luck, tricked people into liking him and manipulated everything to suit his needs. Maybe his therapist had been too sentimental to see it. Maybe all along his mother had known Yoshio was a screw-up an was just trying to warn him.

Yoshio was not a Suoh, and so he didn’t pretend he knew what he was doing. Yuzuru was, in some respects, a dead-beat father trying to make amends and yet, he had the confidence of every man born into wealth that he would be just as good at parenting as he was at the job his parents had bought for him. The Ootori’s were not like that.

When his wife was alive Yoshio had been a good father. They had balanced each other out. They had consulted each other. They hadn’t had to make these decisions alone and now there was no one to talk to about Kyoya. No one to ask for help. His fathers were dead and his friends were dead and there was only Yuichi left, Yuichi with his own children, Yuichi who was an adult but still Kyoya’s brother, nominally on the same playing field. Kyoya would take that as a affront.

Kyoya took everything as an affront and Yoshio didn’t know what to do anymore and Kyoya was shivering and shivering. He was too pale. He was sickly. Loosing weight.

Some small part of Yoshio was whispering.

Kyoya was dying, it said. Kyoya was dying and Yoshio was going to fail, like he’d failed everyone else. Kyoya who was made of ice and fire and blood and who had dragged himself and the body of his twin sister from a car wreck was going to die unless Yoshio did something.

But what?

Yoshio paced his office, heart thudding in his ears. He didn’t know how to do this. He had never known how to do this, and he had only known how to run a business and he was fucking up. He was fucking up once again and he couldn’t lose another child. He couldn’t—

Someone knocked on his door.

Yoshio straightened.

It had to be enough. Whatever he was doing had to be enough.

 

#

 

Things did not go back to normal. But for one week they didn’t get worse. And then Tamaki called again, asking about France.

Kyoya was still thinking about it. He was adding the second story to the ice house, turning the idea over in his mind. And then he realized his hands were numb. He couldn’t wiggle his fingers, each movement of his hands was slow as if he was moving them through molasses.

This hadn’t happened since he was a child. It wasn’t that cold outside, and Kyoya was using his powers normally.  Kyoya should have been in control. But even as he rubbed his hands together, he felt nothing.

Kyoya stood, not panicking. He searched for options, explanations of what was happening. Either his powers were growing so strong that even constantly using them wasn’t enough to keep everything inside, or there was something else wrong with him.

There was no one he could ask about this. No one in Kyoya’s family understood how ice magic worked. His father thought it was related to his mother’s side of the family, but the dead wouldn’t rise up to give Kyoya answers, no matter how much he prayed to them.

If Kyoya couldn’t control himself and fix this, there was no one left that could.

He walked straight to his house, slipping out of his boots but leaving his winter coat on as he walked to the nearest bathroom. He pawed at the faucet knobs, turning on the hot water and thrusting his hands underneath.

There were people talking down the hall, people who would see Kyoya in his coat and ask questions. But Kyoya needed to regain feeling his hands before there was permanent nerve damage.

“I just don’t see why it’s so important,” Akito was saying. There was quiet for a while, then the sound of footsteps. “She’s a good match, isn’t she, I don’t know why my father wouldn’t approve, it’s not like…yes…yes I know that last marriage interview I went on ended before I even got there, but she’s…yes…I could ask him to arrange it, but it’s fine!”

Kyoya generally tried not to eavesdrop on his brother, but this time, he didn’t try very hard. Akito was talking about the second daughter of the prefecture’s foremost lawyer. The head of the law firm, Ai Akagi, had three daughters, the youngest of which was openly bisexual and living somewhere in Europe. Kyoya’s father hadn’t ever said anything negative about the Akagis but that didn’t mean it was hard for Kyoya to hear things. Akito and Akagi’s second daughter, Miho, had gone to the same university and they were, apparently, good friends.

Fuyumi insisted it was a perfect match.

Several people at Kyoya’s school insisted anyone was a fool to marry into that family given the _circumstances._

“She’s great! She’s a genius lawyer!” Akito continued. “Do you know how…yes…She’s lost a few cases, but Japan’s conviction rate is 95%. A defense attorney with a conviction rate of 30% is impressive…yes…I know about her sister…yes…but her sister isn’t _her_ I’m just saying if my brother was… odd I wouldn’t expect people to think that it reflected on…”

Feeling was ebbing back into his fingers, or at least he could move them now.

“No, I’m not saying she _is_ a weirdo…I’m just saying suddenly becoming a prosecutor is a huge move for a family of defense attorneys and…

Kyoya stretched out his fingers. Everything he did was a reflection on his family. He’d always known that. However mundane. Switching professions, moving countries, the Akagi family was proof of how small circumstances would eat away at your reputation even when you hadn’t done anything wrong. A Suoh could abandon his illegitimate son in a foreign country, but god forbid someone do something like be bisexual or choose a different career path from their family.

Kyoya couldn’t afford to make mistakes. But Tamaki was past the realm of mistakes altogether. Half French, half Japanese, Jewish, bisexual, a _bastard_ and was Kyoya really so selfish that he was just going to make things harder?

Kyoya left the bathroom before his hands were dry, and took off his coat as he walked. This were starting to get ridiculous. Tamaki had been calling him since they’d gone back from their trip. Tamaki had been calling about the ice sculpture contest, he’d been calling about going to France, he’d been calling about anything. Kyoya wasn’t stupid. He could see the look in Tamaki’s eyes and he knew what Tamaki was driving at.

But what was Kyoya supposed to do? Break Tamaki’s heart? Stop returning his calls? He kept pushing Tamaki closer to Haruhi, but it wasn’t working. It wasn’t working and Kyoya didn’t know how to fix this.

He didn’t know how to start fixing it, he didn’t know exactly what he was trying to fix. Worse, if he could just flip a switch and stop being in love with Tamaki he wasn’t even sure he would take it anymore.

Akito was long gone as Kyoya stalked through the house, not paying attention to his surrounding. He was wandering, ambling, heart pounding in his chest now that his concentration on the ice house was broken. Kyoya might have kept walking indefinitely if he hadn’t bumped into his father.

“Are you all right?” Kyoya’s father asked. Kyoya froze. His coat was in his hands and his scarf dangled from his neck.

“I’m just cold Father, thank you for your concern.” Kyoya inclined his head and moved to step around his father.

“I’ll have the heat turned up then.”

Kyoya nodded, but his father was still looking at him, eyes pinning him in place. Kyoya wanted to say something. Ideally, he would bolt, and this entire situation would be forgotten, but Kyoya’s father was looking at Kyoya’s red hands and snow damp scarf and putting the pieces together.

“I was considering a grave for my grandfather outside,” Kyoya said. He hoped mentioning his grandfather would make his father uncomfortable, sad perhaps. Ootoris tended to end conversations when emotions got involved. “I just came back from surveying some spots outside that I thought might be suitable.”

“We have a one inside.”

“I meant the other grandfather.”

“The kamidana next to the living room has the tablets for both your mother’s father, and mine. The other one is in the basement.”

Kyoya raised an eyebrow.

 _The_ _other_ _one_.

Kyoya didn’t make a habit of lurking in the basement. When he younger he often hid there whenever there were strangers over, but once Akito had drawn attention it Kyoya had stopped going down there. He hadn’t noticed a second kamidana. Who would have thought to look for one in the first place?

But that must be where Kyoya’s father went.

The Ootoris were strong, but Kyoya had caught his father crying once before and mourning at a home shrine was more dignified that crying alone in your bedroom.

“Here.” His father turned, expecting Kyoya to follow. Kyoya always followed his father. It was a given. Yoshio stepped and Kyoya dove to fill the footprint.

Kyoya walked after him, coat heavy in his hands, scarf too hot on his neck even as his hands were tingling and cold. All at once Kyoya didn’t feel well. His stomach churned uncertainly, like there were chunks of rock in his gut and the feeling was both physically uncomfortable and nauseating.

A lump formed in Kyoya’s throat as he followed his father to the basement door. The basement door was at the back of the house, and usually locked, but Kyoya’s father pulled out the key and unlocked it quickly, opening the door for Kyoya to descend. When he was a child, Kyoya had snuck into the basement through a window at the back of the house. Then his grandfather had died and the window latch had been fixed.  Then Akito made fun of him.

Now, Kyoya descended the dusty steps with a sense of foreboding.

The Suoh’s basement was a lounge, with sprawling rooms and servants’ quarters, but none of the Ootori staff lived here. Not that they had a lot of staff. They had a few, alternating maids. A cook that may or may not be here at any time. The security staff were the most numerous. And security didn’t need a lounge.

The Ootori basement was more like the backroom of a museum.

Kyoya’s eyes flickered to the towering stacks of boxes and dusty lacquered chests. There were vases he hadn’t seen before, and stacks of mats and ornaments that looked like leftovers from the shrine. Kyoya’s father navigated the clutter with ease, turning down little alleys carved out of the furniture.

There was a whiteboard in the corner, the handwriting slanted, equations peppering every inch of it. His mother’s whiteboard. Kyoya’s heart pounded harder. He felt sick. _Really sick_.

Kyoya’s father pushed open a heavy oak door and Kyoya stepped in, peering around the room. There were piles of musical instruments along the walls. A violin, a cello case, a guitar, stacks and stacks of sheet music and records. Theoretical computer science books where piled in one corner and in the other was Kyoya’s grandfather’s shrine, on top of an old wardrobe.

The family’s kamidana was beside the living room, in the small sub-library that had quickly become the room of mourning in the house.  There were too many tablets to really fit on one altar, to be honest, and sorting through them had always been an issue.  His mother’s side had dozens of dead aunts and uncles and cousins and his father’s side had just as many, though these tended to be Kyoya’s great aunts and second cousins. Both of Kyoya’s parents had been the last surviving member of their families.

It occurred to Kyoya suddenly, that everyone who had loved his father, was dead. His aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents gone before he was 10. His mother dead 9 years later. Then his father, his wife, his daughter, all his friends in the car crash. Then his other sort of father.

  And still there was this tablet, separate from all the others, with its own alter. A picture of Kyoya’s grandfather was beside it and the home shrine itself was the only clean thing in the room. His father had been keeping it up.

Quietly, Kyoya’s father bowed out of the room and Kyoya reached up for the silver mirror on at the shrine.

Everything in this room was tucked away. Tucked away just like Kyoya’s grandfather had been, but there was something more. Now that she was dead, Kyoya realized, his mother had been tucked away too. Her whiteboard, her violin case. Not the piano that had been too big to fit through the door, but all her textbooks and sheet music and songs.

Once she was dead people had stopped talking about her. When she was alive, when she was still teaching at the University of Tokyo people had been cordial. They’d smiled at her. They’d liked her. But once she was gone everything had changed. Or maybe it hadn’t changed that much. Kyoya had been young and maybe people had made snide comments about his mother then too, maybe he just hadn’t understood.

Even a world-renowned professor wasn’t free form petty upper-class gossip.

And if his mother wasn’t free, even with her grants, her expertise, her international merit, her revolutionary approaches to her field, still talked about in textbook, _hell_ she had written textbooks that were still used more than a decade later—if she wasn’t free from the gossip, even then, what hope was there for Kyoya?

Kyoya shoulders shook and frost misted over the mirror in his hand. The glass snapped in his grip, drawing a red line of blood down Kyoya’s palm. He stood staring at it.

“I heard something break, are you okay?” Kyoya’s father’s voice was muffled, far away. Blood dripped between Kyoya’s fingers and onto the floor, a soft, pat, followed by another, slower and slower until the blood turned solid, frozen.

Kyoya wanted to laugh.

He should put down the mirror shards, still dangling in his grasp, but he held on to the red tinged reflection.

Kyoya’s mother, his grandfather, had been kind hearted, brilliant people, and they were thrown in a hole, ready to be forgotten. Kyoya was worse. A demon. A monster. Monster’s didn’t get shrines. Monster’s didn’t get mourned.

“Kyoya,” his father’s voice was louder as he stepped into the room. His eyes roamed over the mirror and the blood without a change in expression. Swiftly, he took the tablet form the kamidana with one hand, and turned Kyoya’s palm over with the other. “I’ll drop this with at the kamidana upstairs, wash your hand under hot water to get rid of the frozen blood, then I’ll come over and clean it.”

Kyoya stared after his father as he left. He had two options.

He could collapse to the floor. Laugh. Go mad from the revelation as it were.

But this wasn’t a revelation, not really, not when Kyoya had known his fate all his life, but lied and lied and lied until he’d started to believe it.

The other option was to listen to his father. Let his father take over while Kyoya, a puppet, a wind-up tin robot, followed commands.

Slowly he followed. His father was waiting for him by the door, but Kyoya didn’t hurry. It was if he was walking through gauze, the blood on his hand distant, almost imaginary, the need to vomit a surreal, insidious part of him.

Still, the revelation surfaced again: Kyoya was dying. His very veins would solidify until he was nothing, but a statue. His death would fade until he was nothing but a nightmare.

Kyoya was dying.

Kyoya was _dying._

“You’re going to put his name with the others?” Kyoya asked, voice hollow, dead.

“Him and my father are gone, it doesn’t matter what people say now.”

“It always matters what people say. You told me that.”

Kyoya’s father opened the door to the first floor, but his hands stilled on the knob. “There’s no one going to come and see it Kyoya, we have dozens of dead family members.”

Prickling beneath Kyoya’s skin was the idea that his mother deserved better. His father had gotten rid of her after death, and would now only take her out when it was useful. Like any of his sons, they were only good when he needed them. Only invited on trips to Spain or the Alps when it suited Yoshio Ootori to have his clients meet his dazzling progeny.

Once Fuyumi had given up on becoming heir he had tucked her away too, mentally repackaged her as coward, as someone no better than a housewife.

When Fuyumi was fifteen, when Kyoya and their mom had tumbled over that bridge in the car, Fuyumi had shot a man. She had picked up a gun and shot one of the assailants and in a place like Japan that was unheard of. But she had fire in her veins and she had been out for justice, even as their father screamed to get Akito, she had her mind on something else.

So then, she decided to save people, to be a surgeon, to distance herself from revenge and hate, to deny herself power she knew would corrupt. Kyoya hadn’t quite understood that until now. Now that he had this power, not over ice, but over Tamaki. Now that there was the temptation to give in, Kyoya understood why Fuyumi didn’t want to be heir. She had the will power to remove herself from tempting situations. Kyoya didn’t.

Their father didn’t care about Fuyumi’s feelings. Fuyumi was smarter than Yuichi, smarter than Kyoya and she would have been better than either of them. Nothing else mattered. Only what was convenient.

Kyoya was a good student, a schemer, and his gains for the family could have outstripped Yoshio Ootori’s wildest expectations. But when he died, it wouldn’t matter. He would only be a failure. A dead son was no use to Yoshio Ootori.

Kyoya walked onto the first floor, but his father was still hovering by the door.

“You didn’t say you were losing control of your powers,” Yoshio Ootori said.

Of course. That would put a wrench in things didn’t it. Kyoya’s heart was thudding so hard it felt like a separate part of him. Not something pumping his blood, but something knocking against his chest, asking to be let out. Something strange was settling in his stomach, some peculiar desire to twist, to hurt.

“I’ll see to my hand, I’m sure I just need disinfectant,” Kyoya said.

“You could need stitches,” his father said. He reached for Kyoya but Kyoya pulled back. He wanted to see some emotion in his father’s eyes. He wanted to be able to read him for once, to understand the motivations of a man with the constancy of smoke.

Kyoya wanted, in his last moments, to make his father truly _feel._ But Kyoya was only good for one emotion.

“The cut isn’t that deep.”

“You are not a doctor.” The tone was stern. Possibly concerned, possibly angry, but Kyoya was never able to tell with his father.

“And you are not _mine._ My doctor,” Kyoya fumbled over the words, but he could see his father react. The tight pull of his lips, the taunt stretch of his shoulders. Yoshio Ootori straightened up, raising his hand and Kyoya flinched without thinking.

When looked back, his father was stock still, mouth open, eyes wide. He’d been preparing to grab Kyoya’s hand. To examine the wound. Not to hit him.

A perverse delight flickered through Kyoya. He could see the tips of emotions in his father’s eyes and while he couldn’t understand them he knew he could use them. And like he has with Shin’s brother, Kyoya seized the weakness and twisted.

Kyoya took a step back.

“I care about you, Kyoya,” his father’s words sounded sincere but Kyoya’s ears rang. His blood pressure dropping with his temperature. He was going to pass out.  “I want to make sure you’re not hurt,” his father continued. “Just let me see the wound. We should clean it and then go to a hospital.”

“You’re never made sure I wasn’t hurt before.”

Kyoya should leave, but his legs were weighed down like lead. Hurt flickered across his father’s face, and satisfaction spread through Kyoya. His father had never once helped. Where was his father when their car crashed? When his mother and Izuki died? Where was he when Kyoya had almost died? When he had crawled from the wreckage, scarred, and burned, begging for someone to find him? Where was his father when Shin’s brother had attacked him? Tried to break his arm? Where was he when Kyoya was the one breaking others instead? Where was his father when everyone believed he was a demon? Where was his father when Kyoya started to believe it too?

Where was Yoshio fucking Ootori when Kyoya woke up screaming, not dreaming of being hurt, but dreaming of _hurting._

Yoshio Ootori was here to observe a cut on a hand that was easy to see and easy to clean and easy to stitch and so of course _now_ he cared, _now_ he didn’t want Kyoya to be hurt. Kyoya wanted to laugh.

“I don’t know what—” Kyoya’s father started, but Kyoya didn’t care what he had to say. Everything sounded far away, muffled, even Kyoya’s voice, even Kyoya’s thoughts.

“When I was little, when I was getting punched in the face for running my mouth, when the rumors started, when mom died, when grandfather died, when I dragged my sister from a car crash only to _watch_ _her_ _die_ _too_. Where were you then? Where were you for mom? Where were you when—when…” there were a million things Kyoya could say. Where was he when Kyoya had been on the brink of tears, or having anxiety attacks, or waking up screaming images of blood flashing through his eyes. Where was his father when he really needed him?

 “I saved you from the car _—“_

“ _NO.”_ Kyoya’s hands clench, his lips pulled back and he could feel a thick hot pulse run underneath him. “I did. _I saved me._  You weren’t even looking for me after! You left me to _die_ ,” Kyoya spat. “You didn’t save mom and you didn’t save Izuki and you didn’t save grandpa or anyone. You didn’t look after Fuyumi when she couldn’t handle killing someone, and you didn’t look after Yuichi when almost failed his exams because of stress, and you didn’t look after me ever.”

“Kyoya,” Kyoya’s father’s voice was stern. Indignant, but no rage.

“They died for nothing,” Kyoya spat. “If you can’t protect the people who lived, then everyone you failed to save died for nothing.”

Kyoya turned around and left, feet pounding down the fall, towards the door. His father was coming after him but Kyoya ran, not pausing to put on shoes. He left his father, like his father left him at the car crash.

And just like his father, Kyoya didn’t turn back.

He ran to the little ice house he had made and didn’t stop running until he saw it. Half finished and glinting in the late afternoon light. This was what he wanted to see. This reminder. This tiny hope.

Slowly, Kyoya stepped towards it and paused to plan what he would add next. He lifted his hand out to the top floor, but paused at the spot of blood.

He couldn’t feel the cut anymore.

In fact, he couldn’t feel his entire hand and his fingers weren’t doing what he wanted them to do.

The sickness.

The dizzy light headedness.

The losing control, the vicious spiteful version of Kyoya’s true self rising to the surface.

The signs had been there and Kyoya had ignored them.

And now his he could not feel his arms.

 Swallowing Kyoya struggled through his pockets for his phone, but his fingers were too cold as he dragged them over it.  His movements, jerky, unrefined, not fit for an Ootori, swiped fruitlessly at the phone. The screen wouldn’t unlock.

Kyoya looked down. He’d forgotten shoes. He’d walked out in the snow in just his socks. His feet were soaked. But he couldn’t feel the water, now turned to frozen ice, coating everything south of his ankles. He was going to freeze to death. His father wouldn’t know where to find him. His father might give him so space to cool off. Kyoya was going to die here.

But Kyoya didn’t want to die.

He unlocked his phone with his tongue, trying to stab at numbers even as his saliva hardened. He hit speed dial for one, Tamaki’s number.

The phone was ringing as Kyoya’s knees gave out, and his muscles strained from holding the phone. His vision was growing dim and the ringing in his ears was drowning out everything else. He lost his grip on his phone, dropping it into the snow, still ringing.

It hurt to open his eyes as ever bit of moisture was solidifying and sticking together. It hurt to breathe.

Tamaki picked up.

“Hello?”

It was like speaking with a mouth stuffed with cotton, “Tamaki, I’m in woods, behind house, I need you to come help me…”

“Kyoya! Kyoya are you okay? The woods? Like the trees near your property? Why are you calling me what about your security team?” The security team did sweeps of the perimeter but he was in the forest, and they wouldn’t search for him because they wouldn’t know he was missing.

He tried to explain, but his sounds came out wooden and lumpy as the water in his mouth started to crystallize. Blood started to drip from his nose where his thinning of his nostrils had spilt, but even that turned sluggish.

This action, speaking to Tamaki, was the last thing he could say. And it might be the last thing he ever did.

With a removed alarm, Kyoya thought of what he said to his father.

_If you can’t protect the ones who lived, everyone you didn’t died for nothing._

And now Kyoya was going to die.

Kyoya was going to die for nothing.

It served him right. It served both of them right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY! Hope you like this chapter, it's a little long, but if that's a problem you can let me know! If your dog likes it, or cat, or they hate it or you think I might appreciate a really sad pun you had in mind, you can let me know that too, either here or on my [tumblr](http://www.stories-n-things.tumblr.com)


	7. (Don't) Let It Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyoya deals with the consequences
> 
> Tamaki shows up

 

 

Kyoya was in a bath. The temperature was lukewarm and he was stripped to his boxers and he definitely wasn’t in his en suite or any of the baths in his house.

“What the fuck?”

“Kyoya!” Tamaki jumped into the bathroom, and Kyoya took a moment to process his surroundings. Old dusty tile, ceramics, oak cabinets. He was in his grandfather’s house.

“I’m boiling more water for your bath, the hot water ran out already. You kept freezing it so I had to replace it.”

“I…” Kyoya rubbed his eyes.

“I saw you passed out by the little house you built, and I brought you to this house, cottage thing, and…” Tamaki shrugged. Kyoya kept looking at him. Part of him wondered what it would like to drown himself in the tub right now, but he couldn’t. He survived and he had to live with it.

Tamaki was still looking at him. Kyoya’s mouth tasted like bile and rot and tepid unfiltered water. Kyoya’s mouth tastes like death.

There was no point trying to hide anything now.

“I don’t want you to be in love with me,” Kyoya said.

“I don’t want you to have almost died, but here we are.”

Kyoya narrowed his eyes. “This isn’t a joke.”

“I know,” Tamaki came closer to the bathtub and rubbed at his jaw. There were dark circles under his eyes and something almost hysterical edging its way into his expression. “Your father examined you when I first brought you here and he said you were fine. He’s trying to get the security team to leave because they don’t know about your ice things and—” Tamaki was rambling.

“I’m obviously not fine.”

“He said you were physically fine and should be in control of your powers.”

“I’m obviously not in control if I’m freezing water, even now, am I?”

The intensity changed on Tamaki’s face, from a flighty prince of the host club, to a serious, handsome young man.

“Kyoya. I’m not going to psychoanalyze you, but we both know if you took a moment to be self aware you’d understand.”

“What?”  Kyoya laughed too loud, too brash. Tamaki wasn’t amused. “You think I’m freezing myself? You think I’m subconsciously trying to kill myself?” Kyoya shook his head. “Be reasonable.”

“The only time this happens is when _you_ do it. You’re punishing yourself.” The expression on Tamaki’s face was serious. “Almost dying was just one step too far.”

“Get Out.”

“No—what?”

“Tamaki. Get out of this bathroom.”

Kyoya wanted Tamaki to stay, to say something better, something that would fix everything or erase all their problems. But he was so tired. He was so tired of everything being wrong and not knowing how to _right_ it. He couldn’t deal with another problem. Irritation sparked in him briefly but fizzled out, drowned by the weight of everything Kyoya had lost control of.

“Kyoya, you were literally about to die, I’m not going to leave you alone.”

Kyoya exhaled through gritted teeth, pushing back his wet hair.

“I can give you some space once I know you’re not in danger. And… I know you like me,” Tamaki continued. “If you’re worried about having that conversation, I already know. When we were in the Alps, you sat on my lap and then let me carry you to my bed where we slept with your nose brushing my collar bone.”

What was Kyoya supposed to say now then? Was he supposed to confess all his sins? Talk about the awful things he’d said to his father? Commit to working on himself as a person?

“Look,” Tamaki said. He looked down at his hands. Kyoya wasn’t sure why Tamaki decided to sort this out _now_. Maybe Tamaki thought this was the last chance they’d get. Maybe Tamaki realized Kyoya was still dying. “If you don’t want to date me, that’s fine. But I can make my own decisions, and I’d appreciate you didn’t make them for me.”

“Can we not do this? Can we not talk about this?”

Tamaki was edging closer and closer to the bathtub until his elbows rested on the lip. “We have to talk about something Kyoya.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away.”

But that was exactly what Kyoya wanted. He wanted it to all go away, he wanted it to just be taken care of without him having to dig his heels in and pull his weight. He wanted things to be not his responsibility. He wanted his father to protect him and their family like he was supposed to.

“I know I have issues Tamaki. There’s no point rehashing them now.”

“I just—obviously you’ve been keeping stuff from me. You’re upset and I want to help you and right now this is the only problem I can help with, okay?” Tamaki shifted back on his heels until he was kneeling. Then he crossed his arms, holding himself stiffly like he was trying not to cry. “I know I bud into other’s people business all the time, but we’re best friends. If this was me, you wouldn’t let me sulk alone and you…you almost _died_ Kyoya. I can’t…I can’t lose you. For a long time, you were the only person I had left.” Tamaki voice was far away, and silver tears pricked at his eyes, but Kyoya had the good grace to ignore them.

“I…” he didn’t want Tamaki to cry. He didn’t want to Tamaki to lose a best friend and sob himself to sleep for months. But that didn’t mean he knew how to make this better.

“Why don’t you want to visit my family?” Tamaki asked.

“Tamaki…”

“Are you afraid they won’t like you?”

Not only would they not like him, but they would also know that Tamaki deserved better. Yuzuru had abandoned his own son, his mother had been too sick to help and his maternal grandparents had been fighting and fighting a lawsuit. Tamaki needed someone strong, someone who wasn’t going to let him down. Someone other than Kyoya.

“Your family doesn’t like me.” Tamaki shrugged.

That was different. Yoshio Ootori never liked anyone. He’d used to like his own friends at least before they’d died in the car crash. And he’d used to like his parents before they died. And he probably used to like his wife too. Maybe it was for the best he didn’t like Tamaki. Maybe everyone Kyoya’s dad liked turned up dead and it was better for him to keep his distance.

Just like Kyoya.

Tamaki was staring at him with wide eyes and a firm lip.

“I hate people,” Kyoya said instead. He had to give Tamaki something at least, and if he couldn’t dredge up something deep at least he could be shallow. “As a group, not individually. I hate strangers especially and I hate having to prove myself to them or doing things in public and why on earth would I want to enter some public contest? I don’t want them to see what I do. I don’t want to be around commoners. I don’t want strangers to talk to me. I don’t want them to look at me, I don’t want them to even _think_ about me.”

Tamaki opened and shut his mouth.

“I don’t care about them. It doesn’t benefit me to enter an ice sculpting contest and the only reason I’m doing it is because you want to, but I would rather do anything else.”

“So…we should just build an ice sculpture together and not enter it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“What?”

“Well, this seems like you’re using this as a metaphor for something else but not entering the contest is fine with me. If you don’t want to, we don’t have to. I didn’t mean to push you. I just wanted to do something fun together and if you don’t want to show anyone that’s okay. I don’t mind.” Tamaki reached for Kyoya’s hand in the water. Tamaki’s hand was hot, and with a strange awareness Kyoya realized it was stifling in the bathroom. Tamaki had turned up the heat.

With another strange awareness Kyoya realized that he was allowing himself to feel the heat. Kyoya’s ice powers weren’t out of control because of the power. Tamaki had been right. They were out of control because Kyoya had was out of control.

“You can tell me stuff like this Kyoya,” Tamaki continued. “You don’t have to keep it to yourself. I’m not trying to pick at old wounds I’m trying to understand why you’re upset so I can help.”

“Right.” Kyoya swallowed. It shouldn’t have really been that easy. “You’re not upset?”

“About the contest? God, no. That would be silly.” Tamaki eyes were red rimmed up close, and some of the water marks on his face were clearly from tears and not sweat. “But that’s only part of it.” That at least was true. “Why don’t you want me to be in love with you Kyoya?”

Kyoya paused, but only for a moment. This might be the last shot he had to talk to Tamaki before…before Kyoya’s control gave out and his powers consumed him. Kyoya cleared his throat. “If you’re not going to date someone who’s going to improve your social standing you should at least date someone who’s a good person. Haruhi is a good person.” Kyoya rolled the words around in his mouth, watching Tamaki’s reaction.

“I want to date someone who I like.” Tamaki looked into Kyoya’s eyes. “Someone who I know will be there for me, and that I can depend on. Most importantly, someone who wants to like me, and doesn’t see me as a burden.” Tamaki was looking at him pointedly. Kyoya shifted in the tub. “You. I want to date you. In case that wasn’t clear.’

“You can do better than me.”

“And I could do better than the University of Tokyo if we’re being honest. I’m incredibly intelligent and well rounded and if you could get into Harvard I could get into something just as good. But I don’t want to get into the best school I _possibly_ _could_. I want to get into the best school that fits with the life I want. I want to stay in Japan with my friends. I want a school year with lots of breaks interspersed within it so I can take vacations to see people year-round. And that’s the best school of what I want. And _you_ are the best person out of all the people that I want.”

“My mother used to teach at Todai,” Kyoya said. He ran his hand along the surface of the water, not meeting Tamaki’s eye. “She taught theoretical computer science.’

“Well now we know why you’re so smart.” Tamaki nudged Kyoya’s shoulder, trying to smile, but Kyoya’s expression didn’t change. There was no real humour in Tamaki’s words.

“I don’t know what to do Tamaki. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life and I don’t know what to do about you and I don’t know how to deal with the fact that I saw my own mother die.” Kyoya looked at his reflection in the water. If his sister hadn’t died, she’d look like him by now. Longer hair maybe. Squarer jaw.

 “I know how bad things can be.” Kyoya swallowed. “I know even genius Todai professors can be murdered and I know doctors who run multimillion dollar corporations can fail to save the people they love. And I don’t know how to stop it.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Don’t be ridic—”

“I mean _you_ don’t need to. You don’t have to do it alone. You think I didn’t feel like that when my mother was dying? Ever since I knew what it meant to die I knew my mother wasn’t regular sick. I knew she wasn’t going to get better and there was nothing I could do to change it.

“When I came here, it was tempting to give up. To think there was nothing I could do to change my grandmother’s mind either. And in the end, _I_ didn’t change her mind, not alone. You don’t need to have everything figured out right now. We can work on a plan together.”

Kyoya shifted. He tried to keep still, clam. He didn’t want to work himself up into a panic attack or a crying jag. He didn’t want to think. Thinking meant remembering what he’d said to his father. It meant having to feel guilty about the disrespect and figure out a plan a way to apologize. But then again, respect was earned. If his father wasn’t doing his job, then why should Kyoya give him things he didn’t deserve?

Or maybe Kyoya was just being a selfish asshole.

“What would you say my biggest flaw was?” Kyoya asked.

“You’re kind of an asshole,” Tamaki said without missing a beat. “But your biggest flaw is that you think accepting help from others makes you weak. And it doesn’t.”

Maybe Tamaki was right. And maybe he was wrong, but right now, Kyoya didn’t want to think about that. Carefully, he reached for Tamaki’s hand on the lip of the bathtub and intertwined their fingers. It wasn’t a promise, it wasn’t an admission—not that there was anything to admit, Tamaki knew Kyoya liked him already.

“I changed my mind,” Kyoya said.

“About what.”

“Stay with me. Stay with me for a little while longer.”

Tamaki smiled and for the first time this week, Kyoya felt warm.

 

#

 

When Kyoya’s father got back, he brought an ambulance with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Just one more chapter! SURPRISE! Probably you were expecting more but I cut a lot of stuff. SO! Anyway, if you have comments or concerns, or you would like an epilogue or extra of some kind, let me know! Either here, or on my [tumblr](http://www.stories-n-things.tumblr.com/ask)


	8. Validation is a Hell of  a Drug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the final chapter! I hope it's everything you expect and I hope, that everyone by now has figured out why Kyoya was so cold and how that relates to his emotions! I am sometimes too subtle!

 

Kyoya sat up in the hospital bed as his father read his charts. The private room was crisp and clean, but with soft edges and too smooth fabrics. Kyoya’s temperature had been taken three times since he got here and several other tests had been run on his blood work. His hand was bandaged, but thankfully it hadn’t needed stitches.

And now Kyoya’s father was trying to pretend that everything was alright between them.

Even worse, Kyoya was feeling better and he was beginning to understand why he was feeling better. He was connecting the dots to his sudden warmth, and baring his soul to Tamaki and at first he had thought it was only his crush, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Kyoya should apologize to his father. He should confess his sins and say he was sorry and deal with what he started, deal with the fallout and hope after it was all over there was some catharsis.

“I’m sorry,” his father said before he could.

“I was rude to you,” Kyoya said.

“Yes. But you were obviously upset. Unwell. I should have seen it. It would be petty to act as if you rudely telling me how I had failed, erased my failures.”

Kyoya opened his mouth. He sat up straighter, looking at his father who was still looking at the chart. Some part of Kyoya wondered if this was all too easy, if he was going to wake up from a dream to reveal Tamaki and his father were both deathly mad at him. But there was an undertone to his father’s voice that said this discussion wasn’t over. That Kyoya and he would talk about his earlier disrespect. Somehow, that made the forgiveness more believable.

“When I was young I was afraid of my mother,” his father said. “My fathers could be stern. It wasn’t that they let me get away with things, but I trusted them. I trusted them not to be unfair, I trusted them to listen to me, I trusted that if I did nothing wrong and told the truth everything would be okay. But I didn’t trust my mother. I hid from her. Literally, metaphorically, in every way. 

“She wasn’t physically abusive…but she was just as terrible. She was manipulative, gaslighting, and she wielded guilt like her most prized possession. She wasn’t satisfied when I was perfect, so I wasn’t satisfied. Perfect was what I was supposed to be doing. She told me I was smart, and because I was smart I was good. So, when I failed I felt like fraud, like I had tricked her into thinking I was good, but I never had been. With you, I tried to tell you how hard you worked, because you can always control that. What I’m saying is that I was afraid of her. And when she died I didn’t feel sad. I felt empty. Relieved.”

Kyoya couldn’t imagine that. Even if his father died now, after everything that happened, he wouldn’t feel relief. Something complex perhaps, but relief?

“Yesterday, when I moved you flinched. And I realized _you_ were afraid. What I thought of one momentary weakness at the club, striking you, was not momentary to you. What I realized is that you don’t have another two parents to turn to like I did. You used to have your mother, your grandfather, and then they died and now you feel alone.”

Kyoya shifted. A week ago, he would have been silent, but he could feel the cold creeping into his veins. “You never seemed to care about that before.”

“You didn’t almost die before Kyoya. You didn’t almost die because you were too afraid to tell me when your life was in danger. If you—” his father’s voice broke. “I can’t lose anyone else. I know you don’t think…I tried. I tried so hard to keep it together that night, when your mother died. We didn’t go looking for you because I thought if we left the hotel they could find us, and then I’d lose Fuyumi and Akito and Yuichi and I’m not saying it was the right choice Kyoya. There are no right choices when someone you love is dying or already dead.” His father swallowed.

“You should have told someone else to look,” Kyoya’s voice was bordering on growling. “You shouldn’t have left me.”

“You’re right. There were a lot of things I should have done.”

Kyoya sat up straighter, leaning forward, hands on his knees. “It’s not my responsibility to take the blame for that. It’s not my job to—”

“You’re right. I’m not excusing my actions.” His father cleared his throat. “I made the wrong choice. It was my responsibility to look after you, not your responsible to keep quiet about my failures so as not to cause trouble.”

Kyoya stared. That was succinctly put.

“I know,” his father continued. “I know because I spent years rationalizing this with myself. I know because my mother was worse. I tried so hard not to be her, but when you lose as much as we have, each person’s actions become more important. I am the only parent you have, no family on your mom’s side, no grandparents, and it isn’t enough for me to act the same as one person in a group of many. I should have been louder in my praise of you, and slower and more explanatory in my criticism.”

“I don’t need coddling.” Kyoya bristled. He wasn’t a child. He was trying to be his father’s heir, if he was going to compete with Yuichi his father had to see that. “I let my accomplishments speak for themselves.”

“Yes,” his father paused. “But who tells you what those accomplishments are worth? Can you really tell? When you compare yourself to people who are fifteen years older than you, how do you measure yourself?”

“I’m not stupid Yuichi was my age—”

“But you’re not the same.”

“What? I’m just as smart, just as hard working just as—” Kyoya’s voice was rising but his father shook his head, meeting his eye.

“You’re smarter. You’re smarter than he was, you work harder than he did and you are more innovative. You are clever, _cunning_ , in how you get what you want. You’re more persistent, and more loyal and quite frankly terrifyingly good. You managed to track down Tamaki’s mother in Japan, by yourself, when his own grandmother and her legal team failed to. You bought out our own company by investing your money and discovering a ploy which would lead you to invest in the right businesses at the right time. It’s remarkable.”

Kyoya didn’t understand. Maybe it was almost dying, maybe it was the residual anger he was letting himself feel for the first time, but his thoughts were swirling. “So why…are you saying I’m... going to be the heir?”

“I don’t know.”

 Kyoya stared uncomprehendingly.

“You don’t trust people, Kyoya. It’s your biggest flaw. Yuichi builds real connections and is more efficient because he knows how to trust and delegate. An important trait in a leader. You are paranoid of people betraying you, though not without reason. Still, being closed off makes you unapproachable, both to your friends who like you and to people who you pretend are your friends who see you as cool and unattainable.

“Consider this to the extreme. Were you a general, people would kill for you. But were Tamaki, for instance, a general, people would _die_ for him. That is a huge difference in loyalty. Besides, you hate being the center of attention, but you also hate others taking credit for your work, yet, at the same time, you let them take credit because you feel, as the third son, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You lack confidence in yourself and your worth.

“Yuichi’s flaws are that he doesn’t see as far ahead of you, he doesn’t reach as far as you. You have a hunger like you would rope the sun to hold it in your hand, and still be unsatisfied. You have a drive that is unmatched and staggering. But you don’t know when to take a break. Yuichi has better time management skills, doesn’t over work himself, but doesn’t stretch as far.”

Kyoya paused. He had never quite considered that it was his personality that was holding him back.

“Yuichi is the dependable steady one. You are the brilliant, fragile one. If neither of you were my sons I would hire you and work you until you burned out and then hire him to manage the rest. But you _are_ my son, and I want to do what’s best for you, not just the company. I don’t want you to be thirty years old and feel trapped. I don’t want you hate your life.

“What I am saying is that I should have been more candid with you. I should have talked to you more about these things because you had no one else to give you these opinions and I wasn’t thinking.”

Kyoya rolled over the idea in his head. He would have to think about them more later. He dissected what his father said for the content, for the meaning.

“You can talk to me about anything I said. Don’t be afraid to. I’m not going to punish you for being dissatisfied.”

There was more honesty in that then Kyoya would have thought.

His father reached out a hand on Kyoya’s shoulder, but Kyoya recoiled. There wasn’t pity in his eyes, thankfully, but there was regret and something so familiar that a lump formed in his throat. His father was looking at him in a way that Kyoya knew intimately. It was the way Kyoya looked like when he disappointed Tamaki. It was the way Kyoya looked when he worked himself to exhaustion and still didn’t succeed. It was the look of a man who was blindsided by how wrong he could be, but was not surprised to learn he wasn’t good enough, once again.

Kyoya had never thought of his father as someone who would have struggled with anything. Internally or externally, he seemed confident in his decisions, but if Kyoya could fake self assurance, why couldn’t his father? If Kyoya could put up a mask of callousness, and indifferences, what was stopping his dad?

His father pulled up a chair to sit closer to Kyoya. “Being the top of your class is impressive. While your brothers achieved the same, that does not make it less of an accomplishment. Analogously, being 190 cm tall is tall, but it isn’t being 230 cm tall. Just because you are not the best, does not mean you aren’t _good_. You are the vice president of your club, investing your own money as a teenager, top of your class, a gifted artist, and a friend. That is impressive.”

“Artist?”

“I’ve seen the drawings you do for class. And the ice house you made.”

The house. Of course.

“All right.” Kyoya shifted, looking away. Someone else wouldn’t have seen in the house what Kyoya saw. What Tamaki would have seen. But his father wasn’t a stranger. His father could have known. But did he?

Kyoya stretched out his fingers, feeling and blood returning to them.

Silence fell in the hospital room and there were many questions Kyoya could ask. How long would he be kept here? Where were his siblings? Would Tamaki be allowed to visit? But the feeling that had settled around them was one of confession and to bring the outside world into it, would disrupt that fragile balance.

“I like Tamaki.” Kyoya had never said that. Even to Tamaki, but the words fell from his lips, quiet and soft in a way that was utterly alien.

“I’m fond of Tamaki as well, he’s a good boy.”

That wasn’t what he meant. Kyoya straightened in the bed, but his father stuck out a hand, stopping him.

“I know.”

Of course, he must have been obvious. If his father could accurately dissect Kyoya’s personality flaws like he had before it would have been obvious what his feelings for Tamaki were.

“What gave it away?” Kyoya asked.

“Tamaki did. He’s clearly enamored with you, and I know that usually you are very uncomfortable with people who have feelings for you.”

Kyoya furrowed his brow.

“You don’t trust it. You think they don’t know you well enough. You think that they have some idealized version of you they like. Or you suspect them of only being interested in you sexually. If it’s the second, you stop associating with them at all, and if it’s the first you try very hard to dissuade them, only, this time, Tamaki did not seem dissuaded. Which meant, of course, you were not trying very hard. Which meant, you had feelings for him.”

For a moment, Kyoya had almost forgot that he hadn’t learned his dissecting behaviour from the womb, but from his family.

“Tamaki’s mother invited us to spend some holiday up in France with her and her family,” his father said.

“She…she invited _us_?”

“Well, as you know, her and I are business partners now with her pharmaceutical company and you and her son are best friends, she invited me you, Fuyumi, and my ‘other son.’ I’m not sure which she means. I don’t think either of them are interested. Fuyumi however already bought a book of French phrases. Of course, ultimately I decided it was your call.”

“My call.”

“Tamaki is your best friend, not Fuyumi’s and there are plenty of ways to establish a rapport with Anne-Sophie de Grantaine without spending the holidays with her family.”

Kyoya rolled his tongue around in his mouth which tasted stale and a little sour.

“I thought it best he go with Haruhi,” Kyoya said.  Another confession. His father nodded and stared out the window for two beats too long.

“Ultimately what you choose to do will be just that, _your choice_ and there is no wrong one. My father hated people peering into his life, so staying in the closet was not a big deal to him. He didn’t see it as being honest or dishonest to himself, he saw it as other people didn’t have a right to know what went on in his life. But that doesn’t mean I expect you to follow that example. _Whatever_ you choose to do Kyoya, you will always be my son.

“But more importantly, I know that Tamaki is not like my father. He is half Japanese, half Jewish, and he will not sacrifice any part of himself any longer. Even if he were to date Haruhi, you must know he wouldn’t keep quite about his sexuality.”

His father was right about Tamaki. As much as Tamaki had denied himself before, he wasn’t going to do that forever, and he wasn’t going to let people push him around.

Was his father telling him he should date Tamaki? That there wouldn’t be any repercussions?

How would that affect him being heir? Kyoya had a thousands more questions, but his father stood, surveying the room one last time.

“The doctor’s want to keep you here overnight, but I suggested two days. We can talk about whether we’ll go to France then. But no matter what you choose, my support is not conditional. You are _my son_ and I will not lose anyone else.”

“All right.”

This father hesitated by the bed, but saying all he had to say he left. Kyoya’s head was spinning as he tried to process the sheer amount and type of information he’d just received.

He was spinning out of orbit and he didn’t know where he wanted to land.

 

 

 

 

#

 

Fuyumi and Kyoya’s father were arguing in poorly concealed whispers just outside of Kyoya’s hospital room. He was being released later today and both of them, and Tamaki, had come to make sure he was good to go home. Yuichi and his children had come to see him yesterday, Nori and Kazuo insisting that he freeze glasses of water for them and then fretting over whether or not he was going to die. Akito had come late last night or early this morning, so that when Kyoya jolted awake Akito was there, doing homework, looking like he had been in that position for hours.

Kyoya hadn’t expected anyone to come. He hadn’t expected his father to actually tell anyone, but of course, no one in the Ootori family needed to be _told_ what was going on, not even Akito.

Tamaki was standing by him now, the back of his hand checking Kyoya’s temperature in various places.

Kyoya leaned back and dragged a hand down his face. He told Tamaki everything. What had been bothering him, what his father had told him, how he didn’t know where to go from here. He didn’t need to dredge up anything to say it. He stated the facts, and when he did feel something edging it’s way up, he let it wash over him instead of suppressing it. His life, it had turned out, was some kind of self-enforced pathetic fallacy. Kyoya felt kind of numb as the words left his mouth, like all this had happened to someone else and not him, but he also felt lighter just to speak.

Tamaki took it all in, not asking about whether Kyoya would visit his family for the holidays, not even asking about Fuyumi and the man she’d killed.

“Well,” Tamaki said after a while. His hand was still circled loosely around Kyoya’s wrist, as he sat on the edge of the bed. “I think, if your father was in therapy before, maybe you could try group therapy?  If he’s willing to try to change I think that’s the most important part.”

 “I don’t know.”

“Well it can’t make it worse?”

“You don’t know that.”

“Look, your dad is…he has issues, but you just said he apologized to you and admitted he was wrong. And _then_ he said he won’t penalize you for trying to fix your relationship so I really don’t know how things can go wrong.”

Kyoya considered it. Then Kyoya considered something else.

Tamaki didn’t say anything. His thumb traced the veins on Kyoya’s hand, his eyes trained on Kyoya’s face.

The heated conversation in the hall started to die down before Fuyumi barged into the room, not quite red in the face, but strained. She looked like she was trying very hard to be calm.

“Kyoya, are you sure you’re all right?”

“Maybe if you looked at the chart you would know,” Kyoya’s father said, stepping into the room. Fuyumi turned around, and several men (including Tamaki’s father) would have flinched but their dad didn’t. “All I am saying is that you should be the best at what you do, not half ass everything like this. If you want to be a doctor, be the _best_ doctor, chief of staff. If you wanted to be a solider, be a general.”

Fuyumi only glared.

“Kyoya doesn’t feel cold anymore, except his hands, but those always feel a little cold,” Tamaki said. He pulled away and Kyoya could see the pieces of his mask fit together, the aspects of his personality moving to the forefront or slipping back to be the earnest, commoner loving young man that Fuyumi seemed to want him to be. Kyoya frowned.

Fuyumi was fussing by Kyoya’s bed side as Tamaki pulled further away, but Kyoya grabbed his wrist before he got too far.

“I’ll come with you to France. For March.”

Tamaki froze. Fuyumi continued fussing, missing the context, but Kyoya’s father was still, observing in a way that only an Ootori could. Calculating meaning unsaid, projecting future possibility.

But this time, Kyoya knew they were good possibilities.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the ENNNNND. I have some extra scenes I deleted from this if anyone wants to see them. I don't know if I'll post them separately yet or not. Anyway, tell me what you think here or on [tumblr](http://www.stories-n-things.tumblr.com/ask)
> 
> This was a request for my good friend atrouspine(or something) and if you have other requests feel free to let me know. I am not great a timing, but I have a few things I'm working on now, so you never know! I have a lot of free time coming up next month!
> 
> Also if you want to talk to me about headcanons, writing advice, the futility of capitalism, I am all ears and you can hit me up here or on my blog. No worries.


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